


The Scientific Method

by Eowima



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: (but they're 18!), Academy Era, Academy Era Leo Fitz and Jemma Simmons, Eventually xD, F/M, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Idiots in Love, Mutual Pining, Not Canon Compliant, POV Leo Fitz, Pining, Slow Burn, or so Fitz thinks, science solves everything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-13 10:07:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 37,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28526706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eowima/pseuds/Eowima
Summary: Leopold Fitz has been best friends with Jemma Simmons for almost two years now, and he’s recently come to the conclusion that he might beattractedto her in a more-than-friends kind of way. He thinks he's doing a pretty good job ignoring it... until he definitely isn't anymore.After a particular incident involving accidental spooning and an involuntary body reaction from his part (ahem), Fitz is doing is best to pretend like nothing happened, following Simmons's lead, but then... then he notices something about her, something that could potentially change everything, and he decides to do what he does best: use science and logic to try and determine if maybe she likes him in a more-than-friends kind of way too.
Relationships: Leo Fitz & Jemma Simmons, Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons
Comments: 87
Kudos: 102





	1. The Incident

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone! :D  
> I'm trying something new here, for two reasons! First, this is my first time writing an M-Rated fic which is a little nerve-wracking I'm not gonna lie. Second, I'm gonna try and see if I can manage a regular and scheduled update for this fic, which is something that I've never done before (except during lockdown writing Peter Parker's Plan when I was writing so much I could update every two days xD) So, if I'm doing this correctly and manage to refrain myself from posting everything as soon as it's done, I will update this fic every Sunday until it's finished :D Chapter 2 is written, and there will be at least two more chapters after that (but probably more, I'm really bad at planning if you don't already know LOL)  
> Anyway, for this fic let's assume that Fitz-Simmons stayed at the Academy for more than a year, and that they're both 18 :D  
> Enjoy!

**The Scientific Method**

**Chapter 1: The Incident**

Leopold Fitz has been best friends with Jemma Simmons for almost two years now, and he’s recently come to the conclusion that he might be _attracted_ to her in a more-than-friends kind of way.

He kind of had a crush on her at first – why wouldn’t he really, she’s so smart and beautiful and friendly, and the only other person his age at the Academy. Being the extremely awkward teen he was – and still is, two years later – it was almost impossible for him to even begin to think about talking to her. Then they got paired up in chem lab, and he slowly felt more and more comfortable around her, until they became best friends – fairly quickly, if you ask him. The crush had then receded, leaving room for the most fulfilling friendship he’s ever had – not that he had many friends before to compare it with, but yeah.

Until recently, that is. He’s not entirely sure why, but it seems as if his crush on her has come back full force in the last few weeks. He doesn’t know what triggered it. He just knows that he definitely _can’t_ act on it. He values his friendship with her too much, and definitely doesn’t want to mess it all up by being too greedy.

He thinks he’s already extremely lucky that she’s willing to be his best friend when she could probably find someone better suited to her very easily. He’s pretty sure he doesn’t deserve her, hence why he’s firmly set on ignoring his pesky attraction to her the best he can.

He’s still a teenage boy though. And definitely not perfect.

So yeah, maybe every now and then he allows himself to fantasize about her just a tiny bit.

He figures it’s alright. Definitely better than giving up and acting upon that stupid crush of his and ruining everything, right? A healthy coping mechanism, if you may. The important thing being that she should never know about any of this. Just waiting for this crush to subside, all the while dampening down the pent up frustration brought up by the _situation_.

It’s science, really.

He’s not much into biology – it’s _her_ specialty, well, one of them anyway – but yeah.

He thinks he’s doing a pretty good job dealing with all of this… until he definitely isn’t anymore.

It’s a Thursday night. They have a holographic engineering test the next day, and have been studying for it all evening in Simmons’s room. It’s not the first time they’ve done that in the years they’ve been friends, and definitely not the first time they end up falling asleep together over their notes and books either.

It is however, the first time they wake up like _this_.

At first when he opens his eyes, he doesn’t even realize it. He’s still half asleep, not entirely sure what woke him up, but unlike usual days when he’s woken up by his blaring alarm clock, here it actually feels really nice. He’s surrounded by a comfortable warmth, his arms and legs still weighed down by sleep, and he closes his eyes again, settling more deeply in this very sweet warmth. He’s on his side, one arm curled under his head, the other stretched over something soft, and he really doesn’t want to move, because all this really feels heavenly.

He’s pretty sure he’s never felt this rested before in his life, to be honest.

He takes a deep breath, feeling like he’s melting even more into the comfy mattress, and that’s when he starts wondering since when his sheets smell so _nice_. He blinks his eyes open, his brain very sluggishly piecing things together… until he freezes in horror when he realizes where he is.

He’s facing the back of Jemma’s head. Her soft brown curls are sprawled on the pillow they’re _sharing_ , tickling his chin. His arm is loosely stretched over her waist, his thumb brushing the back of the hand she’s curled against her chest. Her breaths are deep and slow, and he knows she’s still asleep. She’s not pressed against him, the only point of contact between them being his arm draped over her waist, but still, somehow, all his brilliant mind seems to be able to sputter at the moment is the flashing word ‘ _SPOONING_ ’.

He doesn’t dare to move, doesn’t even dare to _breathe_ , his entire body extremely tensed, his heart pounding in his ears. He’s never spooned with anyone before. Obviously, since he’s never slept with anyone, ever. Wait, not that they’ve slept with each other! Like that would ever happen, _ugh_. He’s only ever kissed one girl before, when he was 11, and it was just very weird. He didn’t like it much. Not that he thinks it wouldn’t feel amazing to kiss Jemma though!

_Oh God, why is he thinking about kissing her?!_

This is a disaster. He has to do something. He’s a genius, he can figure out a way out of this right? Preferably before something extremely embarrassing starts happening – something in the crotch area, to be precise. Oh God, this is terrifying.

It shouldn’t be too difficult. He just needs to very slowly remove his arm from over her waist, without waking her up, and then he can just pretend nothing happened. Pretend he woke up on his side of the bed, or slip out of the room before she wakes up. Yes, that’s a plan. Safe, solid. Good. He can do this.

He’s about to do it, very intent on succeeding, but then she _moves_.

If she’d moved away, he would have been able to deal with it. Hell, if she’d rolled on her belly that would have been okay too, he thinks. But that’s not what she does. No, she curls up _closer_ to him, and now her back is flushed against his front and this time he really can _not_ breathe anymore.

He’s pretty sure he’s in hell at the moment. She’s so warm and soft and _real_ against him, and God, she smells so good too, like this mix of fruity shampoo and something else that’s just _her_ , and, and, oh _shite_.

_Yup, he’s in hell alright._

He has no idea what to do. Cannot even start to think a coherent thought. Her breathing is still slow and steady, he thinks she’s probably still asleep, and he really, really, _really_ doesn’t want her to wake up, because his hard-on is now pressed against her arse and that’s, that’s, yeah.

_T_ _his is a nightmare._

It would probably pass off as a dream if he wasn’t so sure he was awake.

He’s frozen, incapable of uttering one movement – or one thought, for that matter. Every part of him that’s in contact with her feels like it’s burning up, and it would feel really nice if he wasn’t so fucking _terrified_. What will she think of him? Probably that he’s a disgusting pig, _oh God_ , he can’t have that, what if she doesn’t want to be friends with him anymore?

_Oh God oh God oh G–_

He’s lost in his spiraling thoughts, but then she moves again.

Almost imperceptibly – except not at all.

She very, very lightly grinds her _bu_ _m_ against the most sensitive part of his anatomy, and his heart jumps up in his throat. If he hadn’t been so tensed and terrified, he’s pretty sure he would have _moaned_ , because that felt fucking _amazing_.

Except he most definitely can _not_ do that.

So he doesn’t think much.

“BLOODY _HELL_!”

He frantically backs up, his legs get tangled in the sheets, and then a second later he finds himself hitting the cold floor with a painful groan. He hears her gasp, and then she’s sitting up in bed and looking down at him with wide eyes. With her hair all messy and her rosy cheeks he thinks she’s looking absolutely irresistible, now more than ever, and he gapes at her in shock. They stare at each other for a moment, the silence around them almost surreal, and then her eyes slowly glide toward the very noticeable bulge in his jeans, and he cannot _think_.

It takes him a couple of seconds of complete astonishment but then he’s gasping and trying to cover himself up, somehow managing to hit his head on the bedside table in the process. He groans in pain, cheeks ablaze, and flinches when Jemma shifts closer.

“Oh, there’s no shame in it Fitz,” she starts with a nervous chuckle, and he wishes his hands weren’t busy covering his crotch so that he could hide his burning face in them, away from her curious hazel eyes and sympathetic smile.

He decides instead to struggle up to his feet, purposefully avoiding looking in her direction. “I’m gonna, yeah…” he trails off, grabbing his backpack from the floor and haphazardly dumping his things in it. He sees her scrambling out of bed from the corner of his eye, and he thinks he would be about to puke his own heart if that were anatomically possible.

“It’s perfectly natural you know,” she says, and now his face, and ears, and neck, and his whole chest are on _fire_ , “and healthy as–”

“ _Please_ ,” he interrupts her, begging, hands grasping his backpack in front of his crotch, still very intently _not_ looking at her. He knows he’s forgetting things, but these things are also on Jemma’s _bed_ , and yeah he's not going back there. He figures it’s okay, he’ll just buy new stuff. He’s pretty sure his calculator is somewhere over there, and it sucks to have to buy a new one because those stupid things are insanely expensive, but oh well. Better this than making more of a fool out of himself, right?

If Simmons could hear him think, she would scoff and tell him to stop being so dramatic about everything.

He stumbles to the door, grasping the handle like a life line. “I’ll see you at breakfast, Simmons,” he squeaks without looking back, and she doesn’t reply anything to that. He walks out of her room, quietly closing the door behind him, pretty sure that she now hates him.

He’s done it, he’s messed up everything.

He walks back to his room, and it’s like he’s in a dream. Not the good kind though. He’s still almost painfully hard, and if that’s not the most embarrassing thing ever he doesn’t know what is. Sometimes, being a teenager _sucks_. Ugh, who is he kidding, _most times_ being a teenager sucks. He spends his walk back praying not to see anyone, but thankfully it’s still pretty early, so he makes it back to his room safely.

He really doesn’t know what it would have looked like to anyone seeing him like that so early. Walk of shame and everything. Ugh, and that wouldn’t have helped the rumors that Simmons and him are actually sleeping together. He gets teased about that quite often, by idiots who think a man and a woman can’t be just friends.

Oh, but now she probably won’t want to be his friend anymore, since he’s proven like the moron he is that this assumption might be spot on after all.

He’s the worst, isn’t he?

He unlocks the door and slips into his room, dumping his backpack and running shaky hands over his face. He’s not sure he’s ever felt this conflicted before. On one hand, desperate and terrified to know that he screwed up and might lose his best friend. And on the other hand… still very much _horny_ – the horniest he’s ever been before, if he’s honest with himself. To be fair though, this is the first time something like _this_ happens to him.

Feeling someone, feeling _her_ , move against him like that–

_Bloody hell._

He really needs to get his shit together.

He glances at his watch, seeing he still has about half an hour before he needs to meet S– um, to get breakfast before class. He ponders for a second on what to do, then his stupid brain inputs an image of what she looked like earlier, sitting on her bed and looking down at him, and yep, hot shower it is.

He tries not to think about anything in particular, but it’s honestly impossible. Images float behind his closed eyes as water hits his face, and his heart is pounding in his chest when he remembers how she’d blush, how she’d looked down… and suddenly he’s wondering if what happened really was accidental. If she was still asleep when she moved against him. What would have happened if her movement _was_ deliberate and he hadn’t moved away in a rush of panic?

Maybe it’s all in his head. But then again, she didn’t look repulsed or anything. A little embarrassed, quite amused at his reaction obviously, and maybe a tiny bit curious as well. She definitely didn’t look mad, or disgusted, or annoyed.

What does it mean then?

He’s a little more clearheaded when he gets out of the shower, and thinks to himself he’ll figure things out when he sees her again. A tiny part of him _never_ wants to see her again because of how embarrassed he still feels about the whole thing, but he’s also curious. And to be honest, never seeing Simmons ever again would absolutely _suck_.

Of course he wants to see her again.

It’s kind of terrifying not to know what she’s gonna say though.

Turns out he didn’t need to worry about any of this.

When he walks into the cafeteria half an hour later, Simmons is sitting at their usual table. There’s a neat stack next to her of all the things he forgot in her room when he fled it earlier. His cheeks are very warm when he sits across from her and meets her hazel eyes, and his heart is very loud in his chest as he awaits for her to… well he doesn’t know what he’s waiting for, honestly.

In any case, nothing comes, because she just smiles at him like she always does, and then starts talking about their test this afternoon. And that’s when it strikes him. Of course the best thing would be to just ignore what happened. Trust Jemma Simmons to find the most suitable and sensible option there is. He really should have known she would handle this perfectly, like she always does.

Maybe a little part of him is kind of disappointed that his earlier shower theory therefor doesn’t pan out, but he’s mostly relieved, because it means that nothing has to change and they can keep being exactly what they’ve been to each other for the last two years. After all, he does hate change.

She acts perfectly normal all day, and by the time they get out of their holographic engineering class after their test, he’s pretty much forgotten about the whole thing – that’s a lie, how could he forget _that_ , but at least his mind isn’t zeroing in on it constantly, which is a relief.

Plus, he’s aced the test, and from Simmons’s satisfied little smile, he knows she did too.

When she offers to go to the Boiler Room later that night to celebrate the end of the week, he doesn’t think much about it. It is something they do after all, from time to time. He doesn’t remember when the last time was, but still. Definitely doesn’t have anything to do with the _incident_ this morning.

Someone sneaks them a couple of beers when they get there – despite Fitz complaining about how most American beers are utter shite – and they play some pool for a while, and overall have a lot of fun. At some point she swats his chest when he makes a teasing remark about her last shot, and he kind of flushes at the contact because that’s the first time they’ve touched since the _incident_ earlier, but otherwise he thinks he nails the entire ‘ignoring that anything happened’ thing throughout the night.

Until _something_ happens.

Something that kind of jumbles his mind, and makes things very, very confusing, all of a sudden.

Simmons goes to the bathroom at some point, and Fitz runs into a girl from his Artificial Intelligence class, Ophelia, as he looks for a free table to go with his newly ordered plate of fries. Ophelia is nice, and somehow seeing her reminds him that Simmons told him once that she’s obviously flirting with him every time they see each other. He’s not entirely sure what makes him do it, but instead of just waving politely and leaving as soon as socially acceptable, he stops and lets himself get dragged into a conversation with her. She’s nice, fairly interesting, and quite beautiful as well, although he does prefer more classical beauty really. And now that he’s thinking about it, it probably is kind of obvious that she’s flirting with him.

He’s definitely not used to _that_ , and is quite awkward about it, but somehow it doesn’t seem to bother her at all, as she keeps leaning into him and touching his arm any time he says something remotely funny.

He’s gaining confidence, and Ophelia seems to notice and appreciate it, but then Simmons appears at his side all of a sudden, and he’s a little thrown off by the look on her face. She looks pissed. Obviously she’s not pissed as in ‘had too many American beers’ because that’s not possible, no, she looks _angry_. Her brow is furrowed, and her arms are crossed tightly across her chest, and when she speaks, her tone is sharp and shorter than usual.

“I’m leaving.”

“You are?” he gawks at her, and suddenly she’s not looking at him anymore, and it’s obvious she’s even avoiding his eyes now. “It’s still early I thought–”

“I’m just tired,” she cuts him with a shrug, and it’s like she’s slipping through his fingers all of a sudden, and he has no idea _why_. “Have fun.”

Before he can say anything else she’s already left, and he watches her go, completely lost at what is going on. A small part of him wants to go after her, but she’s dismissed him so curtly that he can’t quite find the courage to. He has no idea what’s happening. She never acts like this, usually. They argue all the time, but it’s always in good camaraderie, there’s very rarely hard feelings – and when there _is_ , they talk it through and agree on a truce almost instantly. But they didn’t argue for a second tonight, they were actually having a wonderful time until–

“Is she always so snippy?” Ophelia asks with a raised eyebrow, dragging him out of his musings.

He shakes his head, blinking a couple of times. “No, no she’s not,” he shrugs, turning back to Ophelia. He tries for a few minutes to settle back into the relatively easy rhythm of their previous conversation, but it soon appears that it’s a lost cause. He can’t get out of his mind the angry, almost disappointed look on Simmons’s face, and it kind of hurts. He wants to make sure she’s okay, and if he’s the reason she’s cross, then apologize about it and fix things.

He definitely didn’t mean it. Whatever he did.

Especially not when she’s been so nice pretending nothing extremely embarrassing happened this morning.

Oh God, what if she’s mad about _that_?

But that wouldn’t make any sense right, why now all of a sudden?

“I’m actually gonna go too,” he says eventually, jumping to the occasion when Ophelia draws in a breath in between telling him about a class of hers – he thinks, to be fair he wasn’t paying much attention to what she was saying. “It was um, nice talking to you,” he stammers when she frowns a little, “um, okay, bye.”

He waves awkwardly then tries not to run away, cursing himself in the process. He’d be lucky if she still wants to flirt with him after that, in his opinion. Then again, it’s not like he… cares much. It’s probably for the best anyway, since he kind of has someone else in mind… he thinks it wouldn’t be fair to her. She deserves better than this.

He hesitates for a few seconds after exiting the Boiler Room, wondering if he should go knock on Simmons’s door or not. Probably not. He doesn’t want to end his night not knowing if she’s okay though, so he settles for going back to his own room and texting her.

**Fitz:** You okay?

Hopefully she’s not asleep yet.

It’s still fairly early though, or at least, way earlier than the hour they fell asleep at last night.

Last night he slept in her _bed_ , and now he’s texting her to make sure she isn’t mad at him about something he might have done but isn’t quite sure what it is. God, is this what a normal 18 year-old’s life is like? This is _not_ fun. This is very nerve wracking, in his opinion.

He should have just stick to science.

(He doesn’t mean that, meeting Jemma Simmons is the best thing that’s ever happened to him.)

He’s almost made it to his room when his phone buzzes in his hand with her answer. He fumbles with his door, turns on the lights and looks down at his screen. His heart flops a little in his chest at the brevity of her answer.

**Simmons:** y

She always spells her words fully in her texts. She even corrects her very rare misspells and grammatical errors, for God’s sake. This is really, really bad. He falls backwards on his bed, thumbs hovering over the screen, pondering his next words carefully.

**Fitz:** Did I do something?

He watches the bubbles indicating she’s writing pop up and out for a few minutes, wondering with increasing nervousness if she’s writing a very long message… or if she’s trying to come up with what to say. Things are not usually that complicated between them, and he must admit it, he hates it. The bubbles vanish for a good minute, and when he’s resigned to the fact that she won’t answer, she actually does.

**Simmons:** I was just tired, don’t worry about it.

Typical Jemma, he thinks with a sigh. Before he can say anything to that though, she sends another text, and he stares at it in surprise for a minute.

**Simmons:** Besides, it looked like you were having fun without me anyway.

And, _oh_.

_That_ ’s what it was about then.

He can’t quite believe it. She saw him with Ophelia, and thought he wouldn’t want to hang out with her anymore. It’s so ridiculous and so far away from the truth that he almost lets out an audible chuckle at that. Then it strikes him.

She was _jealous_.

Jealous of seeing him with another person – another _girl_.

And that’s… that’s definitely an interesting fact to behold, to say the least.

It’s kind of making him want to jump up and down on his bed, for some reason. But he also doesn’t want to make her wait, or make her regret typing that second text, so he doesn’t jump on his bed like a little kid and types his response instead, without thinking much about it.

**Fitz:** Yeah not really, but it’s okay, I was tired too, I’m back in my room now :)

**Simmons:** Oh

He cannot help his huge grin at this. He can definitely picture the little frown that’s most likely plastered on her face now that she’s realized that she was maybe wrong. He has no idea how she can think that he’d rather have a moderately interesting conversation with some girl instead of having fun with his best friend in the world.

**Fitz:** Anyway, still on for tomorrow? Library at 9:30?

**Simmons:** Right, yes

The wave of relief crashing through him thanks to these two simple little words is very warm and comfortable. A sigh even crosses his lips, and he feels his cheeks warm up just a little.

**Fitz:** Cool! G’night Simmons :)

**Simmons:** Goodnight Fitz

**Simmons:** :)

The last text comes a couple of seconds after the previous one, and his heart jumps in his chest. Simmons always uses emojis sparsely, and anytime she does, he knows it’s because she means it.Which means that they’re good. They’re okay. Today has been a roller coaster of emotions, to say the least, but it’s good to know that they can get through anything together. No matter what happens to them, he needs to remember that they can face it.

They’re best friends, and that _means_ something.

But then again… maybe there’s something else there, too?

With everything that’s happened today…

Maybe it would be worth digging a little?

Maybe he could ask her… or maybe he could investigate.

Do what he knows best.

Use science to figure out if maybe, _maybe_ she likes him a little more than just a best friend.

And then go from there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm very nervous about this xD


	2. Light Touches

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In any case, what he’s pretty sure of is that he needs to science his way from there – because talking with her about it would be absolutely mortifying, and obviously he can’t do that without more evidence.  
> To do that, he can use the usual process of the scientific method. The observation part is already pretty much done, she’s acting a little different, and maybe it means something. The question is easy, is she attracted to him as more than friends or not? Now, since he is definitely not an expert in these types of things – he’s never even had a girlfriend for God’s sake! – he obviously has a lot of research to do before he can hypothesize, predict, experiment, and reach a conclusion.  
> So that’s what he does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember how I said I'd update every Sunday? It's almost Sunday now right? Ooh wait, actually, it is Sunday in New Zealand right now, so I'm good!! xD  
> Thanks for all the kudos and comments on last chapter, it's very encouraging! :D  
> ♥

**The Scientific Method**

**Chapter 2: Light touches**

Fitz very distinctly remembers the first time he ever read about the Scientific Method. Remembers thinking how logical it all was, and how he’d come up with pretty much the same method by himself as early as 3 years of age, back when he’d started really getting into figuring out how everything _worked_.

He remembers reading about Hasan Ibn al-Haytham in a corner of the library where his mother used to drop him off whenever she went grocery shopping. Remembers how he’d tried to figure out on his own how to pronounce his name. Not an easy thing to do for a 6-year-old, but he was persistent. He learned from a very young age that it would always be better to figure things out by himself rather than count on other people to explain them.

That’s why he spent so much time in his youth self-educating.

Which was definitely how he’d ended up at the Academy at 16.

To be honest though, he admits that he isn’t thorough enough to make a good use of the Scientific Method. He is a very organized person, yes, but to his own standards. Most people would think his mess to be just that, but it’s not. It follows specific rules, matching his thought process, that almost no one understands. He always gets picked on in his essays and lab reports because of that. He rushes things, skips some steps because it just flows so easily for him. Doesn’t really like to hash out everything because that takes too much time.

Oh, he’ll do it properly when he really has too – and to beat Simmons, because that’s definitely his main goal in their shared classes – but he doesn’t exactly _enjoy_ it that much.

Jemma Simmons does enjoy it though. Very much. Her face always lights up whenever she dives into it. Observation, questioning, hypothesis, prediction, experimentation, iteration and/or conclusion. She’s stuck these words above her microwave in her room, he noticed them the second time she invited him to study, back in their first year.

_J_ _emma_.

She’s been by his side almost constantly for the last two years, the best friend he’s ever had.

She’s amazing, kind, beautiful, a proper genius like him, and to be honest probably smarter than he is – but only because she loves homework more than life itself, he thinks. She puts up with his grumpiness and brings out the best in him. Her thought process is very similar to his, making her probably the only person in the world that can consistently keep up with him – and even sometimes _he_ can’t keep up with _her_ , although he’s probably never going to admit it to her.

He can’t imagine his life without her, now that he’s spent the better part of the last two years by her side.

And tonight, Jemma got _jealous_.

After the morning fiasco where he accidentally found himself with his hard-on pressed against her arse, she got _jealous_ from seeing him talking with another girl. He’s pretty sure she was jealous. There’s a least an 87% chance that she was, he thinks. Alright, maybe 80% chance.

It’s still a fairly high percentage, in his opinion. And it _might_ mean that she’s maybe at least a little attracted to him in some ways.

Maybe.

He’s not sure.

In any case, what he’s pretty sure of is that he needs to science his way from there – because talking with her about it would be absolutely mortifying, and obviously he can’t do that without more _evidence_.

To do that, he can use the usual process of the scientific method. The observation part is already pretty much done, she’s acting a little different, and maybe it means something. The question is easy, is she attracted to him as more than friends or not? Now, since he is definitely _not_ an expert in these types of things – he’s never even had a girlfriend for God’s sake! – he obviously has a lot of research to do before he can hypothesize, predict, experiment, and reach a conclusion.

So that’s what he does.

He spends most of his Friday night thinking everything through and researching. He wouldn’t have thought so, but it turns out to be very interesting – and also quite time consuming. He falls asleep at an ungodly hour… and forgets to set his alarm for his study date with Simmons. He wakes up with a start at 9:13, and spends the next twenty minutes in a panicked daze as he tries to get showered, dressed and eat breakfast in a minimum amount of time and still make it to the library by 9:30.

It’s physically impossible and he knows it, but he still manages to be ‘only’ 9 minutes late, so he thinks it’s not that bad. Simmons is already sitting at their usual table in the far East corner next to the Chemical Engineering section, surrounded by all her books and color-coded notes, and he takes a few seconds to just watch her and how beautifully studious she is, before making his way to his usual seat.

She barely looks up from her laptop when he does. “You’re late,” she tells him matter-of-factly, and he makes a face at that.

“Forgot to set my alarm clock last night,” he says with an apologetic smile that she doesn’t catch, too focused on her work.

“When _you_ were the one reminding me of our date,” she tuts, and very luckily for him, she doesn’t look up to witness the blush spreading on his cheeks at the word _date_.

“Well _s_ _orry_ ,” he pretends to mumble after a few seconds trying to pretend like it doesn’t mean anything – since it _does not_ in fact mean anything, it’s just a study date right? He’s pouting a little, taking his things out of his backpack, and when he looks up he meets her amused gaze. They stare at each other for a second, and then a small smile tugs at her beautiful lips and she shakes her head.

“Silly Fitz,” she sighs, but the fond expression on her face is evidence that she doesn’t mean it. She looks back to her screen but she’s still smiling, and he lets himself imagine for a second what it would feel like to lean forward and kiss her right now.

Just a second.

Then he shakes himself up and gets to work.

His head is still buzzing with the information he gathered the previous night on physical signs of attraction though, so he’s definitely not as efficient as he usually is, since half his brain is focused on observing her.If Simmons notices it, she doesn’t point it out. And somehow during the next four hours, all his new found knowledge on human attraction – _yes_ , alright, he might have pretended to be a robot the night before while researching all this, which was _fun_ – only serves to prove how much of a crush _he_ has on _her_.

Every little physical sign he’s compiled in his special experiment notebook the night before, he does it, unconsciously. Meaningful eye contact, mirroring her posture, blushing, laughing, unconsciously get closer or leaning towards her, nervous fidgeting, open _smiling_ , or even self-grooming. Everything.

He’s got it really, really bad.

He kind of knew it already, but still, _shite_.

It could be scary, but somehow it isn’t really. It’s Jemma, she’s not going to break his heart, right? Hopefully. He’s pretty sure she cares deeply about him – not matter if it’s as friends or as maybe-more-than-friends. Alright, it might be a little scary still. He doesn’t want to ruin everything. Which is why he’s conducting this experiment in the first place, right? He needs evidence before he tries anything – or before he tries to get over her for good.

He also notices that particular morning how he’s more and more thinking about her as Jemma rather than Simmons. Or, rather how quickly he switches from Simmons to Jemma whenever he has… more-than-friends thoughts about her. Like when she starts biting her lower lip while concentrating on a particular complex biostatistics problem and almost catches him staring with his mouth gaping like a fucking fish. He then spends a few minutes daydreaming about her lips and how beautiful and plump and very very kissable they look before he has to stand and pretend he needs a snack from the vending machine to refocus. It’s all _Jemma_ , _Jemma_ , _Jemma_ in his head at that particular moment.

He thinks it makes sense. Jemma is a beautiful name after all. Simmons suits her perfectly, but Jemma is… something else.

Something he would love to whisper breathlessly in her ear in a certain situation.

_G_ _od_ , being a horny 18 year-old with a crush the size of the moon really is no fun.

It definitely doesn’t help that they spend all their time together either. They go for a late lunch together, and then Jemma offers to go back to her room for a well deserved break over some Doctor Who episodes. He figures it’s fine to go back there despite the incident from the day before, as long as he doesn’t stay when comes the night. He’s not risking it again. Unless… unless he should? What if something happens? No, he needs more evidence of her attraction first.

He’s very dedicated to this particular project of his.

Probably because it’s the only thing keeping him sane at the moment…

They watch a couple of Doctor Who episodes, then he helps her with a presentation for her ‘ _Critical Thinking in Biomedical research_ ’ class, the afternoon flowing by easily. He’s still paying extra attention to how she acts but he can’t quite point out if she’s doing any of the things his earlier research pointed to as being obvious signs of attraction. At some point she does make prolonged eye contact though, but since it’s also paired with a deep frown after an admittedly very stupid joke from his part, he’s definitely not sure if it counts.

“I think I’m gonna go back to my room now,” he yawns when he spots her TARDIS alarm clock pointing to almost 7 pm. He’s sitting on the floor – because no way he’s sitting on her bed again, especially when she’s lying on it like _that_ – and his back hurts a little from all the studying they did that day, so he takes a second to stretch his arms to the ceiling with a small groan.

He’s surprised to see her cheeks a little flushed and her somehow disappointed expression when he looks up at where she’s now sitting in the middle of her bed. “Already?” she asks with a small pout that has his heart jumping high in his chest.

“ _Ugh_ , we can’t study all day _and_ night Simmons, you’re gonna kill us,” he pretends to whine, to hide what that little pout of hers really does to him. If only he _could_ , he’d crawl on the bed and kiss said pout until it disappears, replaced by one of those soft fond smiles she sometimes gives him and that make his heart beat faster in his chest. Or something.

“We did work a lot today,” she admits almost begrudgingly after a few seconds, and he gives her a smug little look at that… but then she takes a moment to stretch too, her shirt riding up just enough to uncover some of her very smooth-looking skin, and he’s hastily looking away, cheeks burning. If she notices she doesn’t mention it, simply pushing her stuff to the side and scooching closer to the edge of the bed. “How about we order something to eat and watch that documentary on the Amazon we talked about the other day?” she asks with a tiny tentative smile, and he’s very tempted to say yes, but then again, he also knows her very well.

“You say that,” he retorts, pointing an inquisitive finger at her, “but that’s gonna end up with you convincing me to do more studying.”

“I would never!” she cries, but her lips are betraying her, stretched into that particular grin she has on whenever she tries to lie to him, and he rolls his eyes with a light chuckle.

“You’re a terrible liar, Simmons,” he says, and she pokes his knee with her foot, crossing her arms over her chest with a very fake grumpy frown. He holds her gaze for a moment with a grin, and slowly her frown turns into an exasperated grin of her own. “Look at you proving my point for me,” he adds cheekily when it does, and she pokes his knee again with a roll of her hazel eyes.

“Oh alright,” she sighs, standing up and offering him her hands. “Do you still want to grab something to eat together?”

“Yeah okay,” he pretends to sigh too, taking her hands without really thinking about it. It’s a reflex really. They’ve done this many times before. There’s nothing to think about when she’s just offering her help like she’s done countless times before – and he’s done the same just as much, obviously. It just makes sense. They’re friends, after all.

Except somehow there’s something different about it this time.

She helps him up, but she must have pulled him up a little harder that she usually does or something, because somehow he stumbles forward a little… and suddenly they’re very close, too close for his sanity really, and her hand flies to his chest to steady him, while his hand grabs her hip to do the same. Her hazel eyes are wide in surprise and her lips are parted, and so desperately close too, and he’s pretty sure his heart just stops in his chest altogether.

They stay frozen for a second, and then he takes a step back, mumbling an apology that even he doesn’t get. She doesn’t reply anything, but as he goes to grab his stuff from the floor and awkwardly put it back in his backpack, it’s like he can feel her eyes burning a hole in the back of his skull.

“Pizza!”

“Huh?” He turns around and meets her eyes, surprised by her embarrassed expression.

“We could go out for pizza,” she repeats with a small, slightly tense smile, and Fitz gapes at her for a second, unsure of what to say. “Unless you’d rather have something else? I just… I remember you you said you wanted pizza the other day so I thought…” she trails off, and she’s looking embarrassed, her voice going all squeaky for some reason, and Fitz has no idea what’s happening.

“Oh,” he nods, then mentally slaps himself to stop being such an apathetic idiot, “pizza sounds great, yes!”

He’s pretty sure he’s not imagining her relieved sigh at this, but then she offers him one of her solar smiles and his brain disconnects again. Once he’s done gathering his things, they get out of her room and walk to the small pizzeria just outside of campus that they both love, and slowly the awkwardness that settled in earlier fades away and they fall back into their usual banter.

It’s almost 9 when they get out of the pizzeria, and Simmons tries to lure him back to her room to study again but he holds his ground – he’s not going to be fooled again, nope, after all he is a highly evolved primate capable of learning from his mistakes, and he tells her so, earning himself an amused but deep roll of eyes. So they walk back together to her dorm, because despite always telling him otherwise he knows she likes it when he accompanies her back when the night’s already fallen, and anyway it’s mostly on his way so he doesn’t mind.

They bicker for a while, and then they say goodnight. Jemma bumps his shoulder with hers and tells him to enjoy his night alone playing video games, and he rolls his eyes. “Yeah well don’t work too much or you’ll get too far ahead of me and graduate early without me,” he retorts grumpily, and she lets out a heartfelt laugh at that.

“We wouldn’t want that now, would we?” she says with a smug little look that he may or may not find deeply attractive. “You’d miss me too much huh?”

“Ha, you wish,” he grumbles, hoping against all odds that she doesn’t notice his probably very red cheeks.

She chuckles again, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, and they stare at each other for a few seconds, her expression matching the fond one he knows is plastered on his face. Then she reaches for his arm and gives it a little squeeze. “Goodnight Fitz,” she tells him sweetly.

He lets himself imagine what it would be like to kiss her right now. Or to tell her how much she means to him. Or how he can’t stop thinking about what happened the last time he spent his night in her room. Then he lightly shakes his head and smiles back. “Goodnight Simmons.”

There’s something unusual in her smile, but he’s not entirely sure what, and he doesn’t get the time to analyze it much further anyway because she’s stepping inside her building with one last little wave in his direction. He just shrugs a little, then starts walking back to his own dorm with an admittedly light spring in his step.

It’s only a couple of hours later when she texts him a funny picture that he realizes something. He drops his controller and reaches for the experiment notebook he’d chosen the previous night, and opens it to one specific page he remembers from his research.

There’s an entire thing about wanting to spend time with the other person in there, which is something that she _does_ , but he thinks that doesn’t mean much since they’re best friends and obviously they’d want to spend time with each other. It doesn’t prove anything.

But there’s also something about light touches. Like her, squeezing his arm to say goodnight, or bumping his shoulder with hers. He racks his brain for a long time to try and figure out if this is something they _do_ , but somehow it seems that it’s not. There’s been the occasional hug here and there, especially when they’re working on a project together and it’s successful – which, by the way, they should do more often because everything they work on together turns out incredible. The occasional brush of fingers when they reach for the same thing at the same time but that’s mostly accidental, and helping each other up when sitting on the floor, like earlier. Sometimes when they watch a show together she likes to put her head on his shoulder for a little while – which is very nice.

And then that’s pretty much it.

They don’t touch much. He’s not very tactile anyway, which is probably the reason why. She’s always so considerate of all his quirks. God he doesn’t deserve her.

But then again, ever since the _incident_ …

Thinking about it, she’s had a lot of light touches for him today. Like squeezing his arm, bumping his shoulder, poking his knee with her foot twice back in her room. Her hand on his chest to keep him from falling when she’d helped him up. His hand on her _hip_. She was wearing the oversize Bad Wolf t-shirt he got her for last Christmas. It was very soft.

Closing his notebook, he lets himself fall back on his bed, pressing his palms to his closed eyelids. He’s pretty sure he’s going mad.

Going mad because he’s crushing so hard on his wonderful best friend.

It’s gotten even worse in the last two days.

God he can still feel her moving against him.

He’s never going to forget it, isn’t he? From the way he’s already half hard from barely thinking about it, he’s pretty sure he’s definitely not. And now he’s also trying to find more evidence that she likes him as more than friends by focusing on the way she _touches_ him every now and then. It’s probably all in his very horny teenager’s head, is what it is.

This is definitely not helping.

He needs to be more methodical, he realizes a little while later when he’s slightly more clearheaded. He’s not approaching the problem the right way – or at least he _was_ until he got distracted by his own crush on her. The key to experimenting in science fields is to control the conditions in which the observations are made, and to modify one or a few factors to draw conclusions. He’s also supposed to have a control group to offer a baseline, but he’s not entirely sure how he’s supposed to do that in this particular case.

Maybe by comparing the way she acts with him to the way other girls do? Except he never talks to other girls really, well, apart from Ophelia the other night but that didn’t end well. What could be interesting though, would be to observe how she behaves around other people. Yes, that could probably be a good baseline. She is after all more social than he is, even if she kind of is an odd bird too.

But then again she doesn’t spend that much time with other people either. Not when he’s around anyway.

Okay this is definitely a lot harder than _real_ science.

But he has to be logical. He’s a genius, he can figure things out, right?

He’s got his question, is she attracted to him or not? His hypothesis is fairly simple too, if she is attracted to him, then there will be physical evidence about it. He’s then basing his prediction on his previous research, for example: if she is attracted to him, she might use light touches like earlier to demonstrate said attraction, or use more eye contact than necessary. Then comes the testing phase.

Like mentioned earlier, to be perfectly thorough, he would probably need to document her actions or lack thereof when she’s with him _and_ when she’s with other people. He’s not entirely sure how he’s supposed to do that though. He might be training to enter a governmental spy agency, but that definitely does _not_ mean he is good at spy stuff. He’s actually very bad at it – like, almost failing his seduction class bad, which would have been extremely embarrassing if he had indeed failed it, because that would have been the first time in his life he’d fail a class, and yeah, he’s not ready for that.

Simmons had been there to help him study though, even if she really wasn’t good at it either.

She’s a very crappy liar, and wouldn’t be able to improvise even if her life depended on it.

Honestly, he’s not sure how either of them passed that specific class. Oh but that’s not true, Simmons _excels_ at preparation, and that’s what she focused on – and made _him_ focus on – hence why and how they passed said seduction class. They both agreed it was very stupid though. But still had a ton of fun working on it.

Ugh, but that’s also where she met stupid _Milton_.

That guy was the _worst_.

He still has no idea what she saw in him. Apart from his very noticeable cabbage head, and his very, very dull personality, there was absolutely nothing, in his opinion. Luckily that particular relationship was short-lived. He was very glad about _that_ , because pretending that he liked the guy for Simmons’s sake was absolutely horrendous and he definitely could not pull it off. She obviously noticed, but never really mentioned it.

This was more than six months ago, but just thinking about that idiot Milton makes jealousy flare in his guts instantly. She only went out with him a few times, and to be honest he’s not even sure she’s done anything with him – well, anything more than kissing, that is. Ugh, just thinking about her kissing that stupid cabbage head is immensely infuriating. How could she be with someone like _him_?!

But the thing is, he _knows_ why. It’s because she’s got a _type_. He’s seen the guys she goes out with. Obviously he’s not judging her, she likes symmetrical faces and he gets that, he sees the appeal. Apart from cabbage head, the other guys she went out with were all quite attractive, but also, and that’s the part that bothers him the most, very tall and muscular. Which are two categories he definitely does _not_ fit in in the slightest.

He fits into her ‘interesting’ category though. That’s always the reason why she breaks up with these guys, because they get boring very quickly – Milton was the worst of them, always agreed with everything she said like he never had an original thought in his entire life. She breaks up with them, and then she complains about them to _him_ and really how can he even begin to think she might like him a little when he’s so deep into the friend-zone anyway? He hates that concept, because only pompous, entitled _prats_ complain about _that_ , but they’ve been friends for so long she probably never even thought of him as anything else now…

Wallowing in self-pity won’t change anything though. He just needs to be logical about all this. Not get too distracted by his own feelings for her. Behave like an impartial scientist, just like he’s supposed to be. Figure out if there’s anything there, and act accordingly. He can do this right?

He just needs to be _methodical_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ♥


	3. Lips and such

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! :D Saturday is the new Sunday apparently lolz  
> Hope you enjoy this, almost 5k words oop!!

**The Scientific Method**

**Chapter 3: Lips and such**

The next day, Fitz is woken up by soft yet insisting knocks on his bedroom door. It takes him a moment to remember where he is. He was having a weird dream about being back home and fixing his mum’s cotton-candy maker – which doesn’t make any sense because his mum hates cotton-candy, and also, who even has a cotton-candy maker, that’s even weirder than having a popcorn maker really. He blinks a few times, trying to gather his surroundings, then his eyes fall on his alarm clock, right as the knocks pick up again on the other side of the door, followed by a questioning ‘Fitz?’ that makes him smile despite himself.

It’s 10:34, she’s _almost_ late.

He takes the time to run his hands through his hair to try and tame the curls a little. Then he gets out of bed, stretching a little, puts on some trousers, and tells her to come in while he steps inside his tiny bathroom to brush his teeth.

“Oh wow you look terrible,” she tells him cheerily as she walks in the room, and he groans around his toothbrush, glaring at her in the mirror.

“Geez, thanks Simmons,” he mumbles, and she laughs. _She_ ’s not looking terrible at all, but really what’s new? To be fair to himself though, she’s probably been awake for three to four hours already – Jemma Simmons doesn’t do lie-ins thank you very much, even on Sundays – so she’s got an obvious advantage. And she’s also carrying a large disposable cup and a bag that probably holds a muffin from that coffee shop outside of campus they both love, so that makes her even more agreeable than she already usually is – but that’s probably just his stomach talking.

Probably.

She knows he likes to sleep in on Sundays, so she always shows up at 10:30 with breakfast and coffee. He’s never grumpy on Sunday mornings, for ‘some’ reason. He spits in the sink then rinses his mouth, smiling to himself when he sees her setting the cup and bag on his messy desk to open the curtains. There’s a warm feeling blooming in his chest at this sight, one that he doesn’t quite understand.

Then he remembers the experiment notebook that’s probably still on his nightstand and he hurries to put it back in his drawer as surreptitiously as possible. Of course it doesn’t exactly work, and she gives him a funny look, but she doesn’t say anything about it, choosing instead to sit down at the end of his bed and kicks her shoes off.

“So, how was your night?” she asks as he makes his way to his desk to pick up the bag and peek inside it – double chocolate muffin, _jackpot_!

“Good,” he says, taking it out of the bag with what probably looks like a carnivorous look. “Went out to get pizza with some girl.” He turns to her as she snorts, giving her a mischievous glance before nodding to the no doubt delicious muffin in his hand. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she responds with a grin, shaking her head a little as he happily bites into the muffin. “I really don’t know how you stay so skinny with that kind of diet,” she says after a minute, and he scoffs despite himself.

“I use my brain all day long, I need sustenance,” he whines, trying to ignore the little pinch of hurt at the mention of his body – he knows she’s not being mean, but he’s always been a little insecure about the fact that he basically still has the body of a twelve year-old despite being 18 now. It doesn’t help that he knows she has a _type_ and that he definitely doesn’t look like it, _at all_.

She’s giving him a look that he doesn’t quite know what to make of, and since he’s only been awake for less than ten minutes, he chooses to take another delicious bite of muffin instead of racking his brain about it. He’s savoring the explosion of chocolate in his mouth when she speaks again. “Sexy workout,” she says like she’s commenting on the weather, and doesn’t seem fazed out when he almost chokes on his muffin.

He reaches for the disposable cup of coffee on his desk and takes a sip to recover – and also hide his burning cheeks, because what kind of comment was _that_? – avoiding her eyes a little as he sits down on his chair. There’s an awkward little silence for a couple of seconds, that he quickly decides to break because it’s too early for that kind of things.

“So how was your night?” he asks, and he thinks his voice sounds a little weird, but from the thoughtful look on her face he thinks she doesn’t notice it.

“Good,” she says with a small smile, smoothing the bed cover absentmindedly.

“Simmons, did you work all night?” he asks suspiciously when she doesn’t elaborate, and she gives him a side-eye that makes him chuckle. “What? Just asking!”

“I didn’t, if you must know,” she answers petulantly, and he can’t help his amused smile at that. “I just finished that report for Hall, and then I read a little.”

“Cool,” he sighs, stretching some more and fighting back a yawn. “So what d’you wanna do today?”

“Well”, she starts, moving a little closer to him, and he suddenly remembers what _he_ ’s supposed to do today. “I wasn’t joking yesterday when I told you we could watch that documentary on the Amazon, so I thought we could watch it together now?”

His mouth feels a little dry all of a sudden, and he takes a sip of coffee to give himself the time to think. This is actually a great idea, because it aligns perfectly well with what he’s decided to do the previous night, regarding his _experiment_ : which is, to focus on one specific sign of attraction per day. Since he knew he’d probably spend his whole day with Jem– _Simmons_ today, he thought he’d work on closeness and, if he has time, on _lips_ – because yes, _apparently_ , when around someone they like, women tend to lick their lips often? Fuck, just thinking about it makes his heart kind of pound in his chest, he really needs to get a grip.

If they watch something together this morning, he can experiment and see whether or not she tends to stand close to him or not. Yes, this sounds great.

Why is he so nervous then?

“Sure yeah okay sounds great,” he stammers a little, and she raises a questioning eyebrow at him but doesn’t comment on it. He hides behind his coffee cup again, burning his tongue in the process, then looks up at her and smiles. “I’ll get my laptop then.”

“And I’ll make us some tea,” she nods with a satisfied grin, and he chuckles.

“I’m not even done drinking this!”

She just shakes her head in response, standing up to prepare tea, because nothing stops Jemma Simmons when she decides to make some tea, he obviously knows that. She’s made him buy a tiny electric kettle some time the previous year, exactly like the one she has in her own bedroom, just for that purpose – ‘ _microwave your tea water, what are you, barbaric?_ ’ Also arguing that she needed it when they worked in his room instead of hers. He’d been a grump about it, but had to admit after a while that it was in fact very practical.

She fills it in the sink then gets their two mugs – one with the caffeine molecule for her, and one with ‘Actually it _is_ rocket science’ for him – and it’s only when she starts rummaging through his tea box and the kettle starts to get loud that he realizes he hasn’t moved in the last two minutes. He shakes his head, thinking to himself he’s lucky she hasn’t caught him staring like a creep, then gets to his laptop and turns it on. He straightens the covers on his bed, then sets the computer at the end of it like they always do.

He’s queuing the documentary when Jem– _Simmons_ hands him his mug, and he sets it carefully on his bedside table while she does the same on the other side of the bed. She grabs a few pillows from the floor – he has the habit of throwing them around every night and only keeping one – and sets them against the headboard. He realizes he’s staring again when she looks up with another questioning look in her eyes, and he feels his cheeks warm up a little.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, dropping down on his side of the bed, trying to evaluate what the correct distance from her is. Not too close so that she can move closer if that’s something she _does_ , but not too far that it looks like he doesn’t want to sit next to her. Maybe he’s overthinking this. Yeah, scratch that ‘maybe’, he’s _obviously_ overthinking this.

“Ready?” she asks him in a sweet voice, and he nods, mouth very dry again. She stretches her leg to press the space bar with her big toe – she’s wearing the Pikachu socks he got her for her birthday, very cute – then settles comfortably on her pillows, cradling her mug in her hands, hazel eyes trained on the screen.

There’s that warm feeling blooming in his chest again.

Nothing much happens in the next hour or so. The documentary is incredible, fascinating and quite heartbreaking at times. Simmons softly bumps his shin with her foot when he starts sniffling a little – orangutans are amazing, and do _not_ deserve any of what they’re going through okay? – and he knows she’s not making fun of him but showing him without words that she feels the same, and it warms his heart a little.

It kind of dampens down his disappointment at the lack of closeness between them. As in, she doesn’t move closer to him at all, during the entire documentary. She stays on her side of the bed, and it makes him wonder how they ended up spooning the other night – then he forcefully stops himself from thinking more about it because that’s dangerous territory.

He still has a great time, obviously, but he thinks it would have been a lot better if she’d moved closer, or if she’d leaned her head on his shoulder, or if she’d grabbed his hand during that scary part with the fires – oh, but that’s just wishful thinking, like any of _that_ ’s ever gonna happen.

The only other time she touches him is when she sits up when the credits start rolling and stretches her arms, accidentally nudging him in the face. She apologizes profusely, muffling her chuckles behind her hand, and he pretends to groan grumpily until she offers to go out for some ‘well-deserved’ lunch. He obviously perks up at that, which makes her laugh again, then he shoos her out of his room while he takes a shower and gets properly dressed. He also takes the time to write down his observations – more like his _lack_ of observations, really – in his experiment notebook, then he goes to meet her in the cafeteria.

Pretty much their usual Sunday routine. They eat, then Simmons obviously offers to study in the library, and so that’s what they do. As Fitz gathers his things in his room, he thinks this would be the perfect opportunity to focus on the lips thing. In the midst of all the working, obviously. He’s not second-best of their year just because he’s a genius.

He’s also very competitive and would like nothing more than to beat Jem– _Simmons_ in their shared classes and become first-best, obviously. And if he wants to do that, he’s gotta study his ass off, because she's crazy and loves homework more than life itself, which means he needs to beat her at her own game. It’s great.

For the first hour or so of studying, he actually focuses on studying, and he gets a lot done, which is always nice. Then he lets himself get a little distracted by her lips– wait, _no_ , he lets himself focus on his very serious and very scientific experiment.

“What are you doing?”

He jumps despite himself, blinks a couple of times, then reaches for his book, pretending to absentmindedly turn a page. “Oh, reading this very interesting–”

“No,” she cuts him with a small frown, “you were staring at me.”

“Was not,” he retorts petulantly, and she rolls her eyes.

“You were staring at my mouth,” she deadpans, and he instantly feels his cheeks growing warm from the way she’s staring him down – and also from the rightful accusation because _yes_ , he was staring at her mouth. “What is it, do I have something in my teeth?”

“I wasn’t, I, no, I mean, there’s–”

She keeps staring at him for a minute as he attempts to stammer an explanation, then she eventually shakes her head and goes back to her chem lab report with a deep sigh. He goes back to his book and pretends to mumble something about her being weird, and she so obviously rolls her eyes that he can spot it from the corner of his eye alone.

He needs to find a solution, it was obvious that he would get caught staring at her mouth, especially since it’s so pretty and distracting and he tends to gape at it without realizing it. How can he stare at her lips without being spotted? The answer to that question comes to him instantly and he mentally rolls his eyes at himself for not thinking about it _before_ getting caught staring.

He’s lucky today is a particularly sunny day, it shouldn’t take much convincing to move their little homework date outside, he thinks. He just needs to remember where he’s put his sunglasses – he’s pretty sure his mom made him buy a pair when he first moved to the US, to ‘protect these gorgeous blue eyes of his from this God forsaken sun’. Yeah, he didn’t need sunglasses quite regularly back in Glasgow.

“Hey Simmons?” he starts, about half an hour later – just because he wants to make sure she doesn’t connect the dots between him gaping at her lips and him wanting to go outside – when he usually never does, hello, clear skin – with convenient sunglasses that keeps her from seeing what he’s looking at.

Because really, who knows with this one, she’s definitely too smart for her own good.

“Mmh?” she responds mindlessly, not looking up from her notes.

“How about we uh,” he hesitates, not entirely sure how to say this without sounding suspicious – but maybe he’s being a little paranoid. “I mean, we could study outside on the quad, it’s such a beautiful day.”

This effectively grabs her attention and she looks up to him, eyebrows raised in disbelief. She stares at him a little suspiciously for a few seconds, then a small smirk stretches her lips. “Who are you and what have you done with Leopold Fitz?” she asks teasingly, and he almost hurts his neck from rolling his eyes too hard. She chuckles at his reaction, and adds before he can mumble anything: “Sure, that’d be lovely.”

He stares at her in surprise, then smiles too. “Great! I just need to grab something from my room first though so–”

“Solar cream for your vampire skin?”

“Ha ha, very funny Simmons.”

She bumps his foot playfully under the table, then rolls her shoulders with a little sigh. “I’ll drop by my room too then,” she tells him, “see you outside in 15 minutes?”

“Sounds great,” he nods, doing his best not to glance at her lips yet again because she’s smiling so brightly it makes his heart flutter in his chest.

They gather their things, and then get out of the library. She bumps his shoulder to say goodbye, and he may or may not watch her walk away, before shaking his head and heading towards his own room. Unsurprisingly, he finds his sunglasses fairly quickly, despite them being in probably one of the least appropriate place to store sunglasses, which is on top of his dresser behind the big suitcase he uses when he goes back home. He takes a few minutes to write down a few observations in his experiment notebook, and then grabs his things and leaves his room to meet up with Simmons.

He’s thought everything through.

He’s not getting caught staring this time. He’s also prepared to answer questions about his glasses that he’s pretty sure he’s never worn in front of her before. Somehow though, he doesn’t have to. When he meets up with her at the entrance of her building, she just gives him a funny look, probably surprised, but doesn’t comment on it. They walk side by side towards the quad, and his heart jumps in his chest when their hands brush at some point.

He chances a glance at her, and she doesn’t seem fazed out about it, which is somehow both reassuring and disappointing, although he can’t really say why. They find a nice free spot in the sun and settle down on the large blanket Simmons brought with her – trust Jemma Simmons to always come prepared. He wants to praise her for it – because all _he_ was prepared for was to sit in the grass and pray there wouldn’t be too many creepy insects crawling on him – but he’s afraid it would sound flirty or something, and he’s not sure he can pull off flirty.

He’s not entirely sure she’d want to flirt with him anyway. That’s what he’s trying to figure out anyway. Operation Sunglasses is underway.

It’s curiously exhilarating to watch her without her noticing it. Obviously that’s not the only thing he does, he works on his Nanotech project too, but he moves his eyes up from his work every so often to glance at her lips.

Sadly – today is not his day, apparently – nothing much happens in that department – apart from the fact that the more he looks at them, the more desperate he is to kiss them. She wets her lips while looking in his direction at some point, but since she just took a gulp of water, her fingers still wrapped around the bottle, he thinks it doesn’t count. She bites on her lower lip softly in concentration on two separate occasions, and while very distracting, it also doesn’t mean anything.

He’s not as disappointed about the lack of _observations_ as he was this morning though. There is something very nice about working outside and staring at his best friend as she studies, so maybe that’s why. It’s peaceful, comfortable, and maybe he can’t reach a conclusion from his observations of the day, but he’s still spending time with her and that’s always nice.

“We should do this more often,” he says after a while, and yes, it might be uncharacteristic of him, but he really means it.

Jemma looks up from her Mass Spectrometry notes with a raised eyebrow. “Oh wow,” she snorts in amusement, and he frowns, “maybe you should wear a cap too with the glasses, I think the sun is hitting too hard and making you delirious.”

“Ugh!” He throws his hands up with a roll of eyes, and Jem– _Simmons_ lets out a laugh that makes his heart jump in his chest from how delighted and fond it sounds. He shakes his head, pretending to look back at his tablet while actually glancing at her… and his heart stops.

She’s looking at him with mirth in her familiar eyes, and she’s also smiling, nothing unusual with either of those things. But then she does _something else_. She bites down one side of her lower lip, before slowly releasing it, as her _eyes_ – _fuck_ , her eyes move up and down, very obviously _checking him out_ , and yeah he’s pretty sure he’s in cardiac arrest now.

It’s sending shivers up and down his spine, and he suddenly feels incredibly light-headed. He does the only sensible thing that comes to mind and flops down on his back, pretending to stretch and yawn to hide the mess he is at the moment. His heart is pounding so hard in his chest that’s pretty much the only thing he can hear. That was way too much, _Christ_.

He doesn’t get the time to wonder what the hell that was, if it means something, and if it does, then _what_ , because she’s poking his knee lightly with what appears to be her pen. “Tired already?” she asks, and he can hear the amusement in her voice.

He takes a second to move his glasses up a little and press shaky fingers on his eyelids, before replacing them and taking a big breath to hopefully regain his cool – even if he knows perfectly that it’s lost in advance. “Yeah I guess,” he sighs, and to his relief his voice doesn’t sound too squeaky. He’s almost scared of looking back at her, but he can’t help himself after a minute – he’s weak, he knows it, but he can’t exactly bring himself to care.

She’s not looking at him anymore, her attention back on her notes. He lets out a sigh and looks away again, losing himself in the contemplation of the clouds above his head for a moment. His heartbeat is slowly getting back to normal as he does, because he’s very consciously _not_ thinking about what he just saw – he definitely doesn’t want to find himself with a situation in his pants because of _it_ , because that would be fucking _embarrassing_.

It’s nothing. Nothing at all, really.

He thinks he’s doing a good job with it, but then he spots movement at the corner of his eye, and suddenly she’s lying down next to him, her elbow brushing his, and he catches his breath, heart pounding again.

What is happening?

He forces himself through peaceful breaths to try and remain calm, but his brain is running a hundred miles per hour. He doesn’t know much about anything, but them lying next to each other on the grass watching the clouds kind of feels like something two people on a _date_ would do? As in, two people romantically interested in each other? Paired with what happened earlier… ah, but maybe he’s mixing things up, watching the _stars_ is romantic, watching the clouds is… what is it? What are they doing? What the hell is going on?

He’s panicking just a little – or maybe a lot. They’ve never done this before. Is this weird? Does it mean something? Or not at all? How can he get anything done in his life when he freaks out so easily whenever _she_ does something that she’s never done before? Why does he have to overthink everything all the time? Why does he have to have a crush on his freaking best friend?

That one’s easy, she’s the most amazing person he’s ever met in his life, it makes perfect sense.

“Fitz, look!” she nudges him and he jumps, blinking out of the labyrinth of questions he’d been lost in. She’s pointing to the sky, and he follows the direction of her finger to a weirdly shaped cloud that kinda looks like a… “This one looks like a Bunsen burner!”

He turns his head to look at her just as she does the same, grinning at her delighted smile. Her eyes are almost golden in the afternoon sun. “You’re such a nerd,” he tells her with a snort, and she shoves him with a roll of her eyes.

“Shut up, you love it.”

Yeah, he’s definitely not gonna argue with that.

Somehow this little exchange manages to ground him back to reality, and he finally finds himself relaxing enough to actually start watching the clouds above his head and appreciate this soft and comfortable moment between them. Whatever it means. Maybe it doesn’t matter if she has feelings for him or not. Maybe he just needs to make sure she wants him in her life for the longest time possible.

“Oh, this one kind of looks like a–”

“Monkey!” she finishes, and she sounds so thrilled – when he’s the one obsessed with monkeys in the first place – that his cheeks hurt from smiling too much at her reaction. They saw the cloud at the same time, saw the same thing, and she gets excited because she _knows_ he loves monkeys. God he doesn’t deserve her.

He glances at her and she’s grinning at the sky. For a second he lets himself imagine what it would be like to kiss her right now. Just a second. Then he looks back up at the clouds, a little tinge of sadness ringing in his heart. He wonders what it would be like to be more confident and just go for it. Wonders how she would react, wonders if she’d kiss him back, wonders what would change and what would stay the same if she did.

He’s longing for her when she’s right there, longing for something _more_ , and at the same time is too afraid that things would change too much between them.

This doesn’t make any sense, except that it does.

He’s so deep in his thoughts that it takes him a minute to realize she’s moved again. She’s not lying on her back anymore, but leaning up, propped on her elbow, and she’s looking down at him. There’s a small smile stretching her lips, and his heart rate picks up at this sight. Her eyes are soft and beautiful, staring at him with a very fond expression that’s warming him up completely from the inside and taking his breath away at the same time.

He couldn’t look away from her even if he wanted to. He’s always been shy, has always shied away from most conversations, is always reluctant to engage with people. Being at the center of someone’s attention, interacting with them, getting closer to them, these things have always been a source of stress throughout his entire life. He’s had a hard time fitting in with other people, because he’s so young, because he’s so different, because only a handful of people actually understands him.

But then there’s Jemma.

With her hazel eyes and her solar smile, her intricate mind and her stubborn intelligence, her resilience and the light freckles on her cheeks, her chocolate curls and the soft curve of her lips. The way she blinks in the sun, the way she looks at him when she’s right and he’s wrong, the way she likes her tea and the way her nose scrunches when she watches him eat junk food.

It’s like he’s drawn to her, to everything that’s _her_ , on a molecular level.

He’s not the one working on a biology or chemistry PhD. He wonders if she could find an explanation to all of this. The chemical reactions in his body responsible for this particular feeling. God, he can so easily imagine how bright her smile would be if he happened to ask her this question. She would get so happy, so enthusiastic, like she always does whenever she talks about something she loves.

The warm feeling blooming in his guts at this thought probably indicates that he doesn’t _just_ have a crush on Jemma Simmons, but that he’s rather completely and hopelessly in love with her, but that’s a thought for another time.

Because this is it.

The moment.

He doesn’t know much about romance, but he can still feel it in his guts.

If she has feelings for him, this is when she kisses him.

It would be perfect. Perfect opportunity, perfect timing, perfect everything. Trust Jemma Simmons to do everything perfectly. He shouldn’t be surprised. He still is. She’s looking so intently at him, and he can’t quite tell if she’s leaning in or if it’s just his imagination. He realizes his sunglasses are still on, and somehow it becomes very important in his mind to take them off. He reaches for them, tugging them down, and fully meets her hazel eyes with his blue ones.

“What are you doing?” he whispers, and he thinks he sounds breathless, which makes sense because that’s exactly how he feels. His heart is so loud in his chest he’s kind of hoping she doesn’t hear it.

But somehow there’s a shift in her eyes, and the moment is broken so suddenly that he’s pretty sure he can hear it shatter into pieces around them. She flops back down on the ground with a small groan, raising her hands to her face, and now it’s his _heart_ that’s breaking into a million pieces.

“I think we should get back to work,” she says, her voice muffled by her hands, and he nods dumbly, sitting up slowly. She sits up next to him, and he definitely notices how she puts some distance between them, and his heart is breaking a little more because of it.

So this wasn’t it. Or maybe it was, but then he spoke and she realized this wasn’t what she wanted at all. Or perhaps he completely misread the situation. God, he is the worst. What would’ve happened if he hadn’t opened his big mouth? Ugh, probably nothing, it’s all probably in his stupid head. Despite everything he’s observed, he’s pretty sure all the ‘evidence’ he’s compiled is circumstantial and not direct.

Granted, to have direct evidence of her attraction would be to hear her say that she does.

And to have that, he would need to ask her about it.

But he can’t do that.

He can’t do that, because he’s a coward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pleaaaaaase tell me what you think of this!! :D my creative spirit is fueled by comments, they're the best! :D Hope you enjoyed this chapter! ♥


	4. Other People

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fitz prides himself in being different than most people.   
> That being said, like most people, he hates Mondays.   
> This Monday in particular doesn’t even feel real. Like he’s been in a different world the whole weekend and then has to come back to this other world that’s not nearly as fun. Not that he doesn’t like his classes here at the Academy, but this entire weekend was… something else. And it’s hard to come back to reality.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you may have noticed, I upped the chapter count again, because of who I am as a person xD actually no, it's not my fault, this story is just too much fun to write and I ended up writing almost 5k words for something that was supposed to be 2k maximum, so there's that. Honestly, I have no idea why I'm saying all this because it just means more words for you guys to read and I'm pretty sure you're okay with that LOL  
> Anyway, hope you enjoy our two pining idiots in this chapter! :D

**The Scientific Method**

**Chapter 4: Other people**

Fitz prides himself in being different than most people.

That being said, like most people, he hates Mondays.

This Monday in particular doesn’t even feel real. Like he’s been in a different world the whole weekend and then has to come back to this other world that’s not nearly as fun. Not that he doesn’t like his classes here at the Academy, but this entire weekend was… something else. And it’s hard to come back to reality.

It doesn’t help that he doesn’t have any class in common with Simmons on Mondays. They usually eat lunch together, but that day he loses track of time after his Optics and Photonics Technologies class talking with Professor Heriot and when he gets to the cafeteria, she’s already done eating. He apologizes, and she waves him off with a kind smile, before continuing her conversation with one of her classmates from her Biometrics class.

While waiting in line for his food, he takes the time to observe her from afar, thinking to himself it can serve as a good baseline for his experiment. See how she acts with other people, compared to how she acts with him. He notes her smile, her casual attitude, her enthusiasm, and even hears her laugh from across the cafeteria chatter. She doesn’t look that much different than when she’s with him, but this is only the first time he really watches her talking with someone else, so there’s no real need to feel so disgruntled by it, right?

Ugh, he’s pathetic.

When he gets back with his food, Simmons is still at their usual table, alone, but he can sense her impatience a mile away. Something in her posture tips her off, he thinks, although he can’t quite explain it. He sets his tray down on the table and she looks up with a tight smile, and that’s confirmation enough in his opinion.

“You don’t have to wait for me,” he informs her, and she gives him a puzzled look.

“Oh no I–”

“Really I can eat by myself if you have things to do,” he cuts her and she frowns a little, “it’s my own fault I’m late.” She’s still not standing up though, but is now looking conflicted, and he rolls his eyes because really, why does she have to be so kind all the time? “Come on, Simmons! I know that look.”

This actually gets an amused smile out of her, and she tilts her head to the side. “What look?”

“It’s your ‘oh I want to review a few things before my next class but I don’t want to abandon you on your lonesome in the cafeteria’ look.”

“ _Ugh_ , Fitz!” she groans, standing up and glaring at him, which makes him smirk in return. “I hate it when you use that voice, that’s not even how I sound!”

“Sounds about right to me,” he retorts with a shrug, finally sitting down in front of his rapidly cooling spaghetti Bolognese. It’s definitely worth it, he thinks, to have her stare at him like that, in both deep annoyance and fond amusement.

She grabs her bag, rolling her eyes at him, and he has to bite down his own smile because it’s probably too big for a situation like this. They’re just bickering like they always do. He doesn’t have to be so freaking delighted about it. Well, to be fair though, talking with her right now kind of feels like the highlight of his day so far.

Mondays suck, but a little less when she’s around.

What a lovesick idiot he is.

She hesitates for a second, then reaches forward and bumps his shoulder with her fist in what can only be described as a deeply awkward gesture that none of them has ever done before. He looks up at her in surprise, and she makes a face, looking a little embarrassed, then shrugs. “See you later?” she asks, not exactly meeting his eyes, and he nods a little dumbly. She offers him a smile, then walks away, and he watches her disappear out the cafeteria doors, with no clear idea of what just happened.

He overthinks it during most of his lunch, and doesn’t come up with even one tiny bit of an explanation for it. He doesn’t get much time to think after that. His Monday afternoons are always extremely busy, between his Nuclear Engineering class and his Nanotech class. When he gets out of the lab at 6:30 and texts Simmons and asks if she wants to grab a bite together, she texts him back that she’s been paired with Kelly for a new Microbiology project, and that she’s studying with her tonight.

This definitely puts him in a bad mood, and he sulks in his room for the rest of the night, which doesn’t make much sense, but it is what it is. The good thing about this is that he’s _almost_ excited to get up the next day to get to the History of SHIELD class they share.

Obviously he regrets this thought almost as soon as the class starts the next morning, because Professor Vaughn is the most boring man alive, but he’s sitting next to Simmons and she’s poking him in the ribs every time he dozes off too obviously, so there’s that. They go their separate ways after that class, and as always on Tuesdays, meet again in the afternoon for their Biophysics class – although for some reason Professor Pearson always chooses not to pair them off together like everyone else does, and he ends up wasting his time with stupid _Milton_ instead of spending more time, or ahem, _working_ with Simmons.

She’s paired up with some older cadet named Cooper, and Fitz stews in his own jealousy when it becomes obvious that the idiot is absolutely flirting with her. The only good thing coming out of this particular class, is the observation – that he quickly puts in his experiment notebook as soon as he gets a minute – that while she does look like she’s enjoying the attention, she’s not responding to stupid Cooper or engaging any further.

It is a very good thing, in his opinion, because the guy definitely looks like he could be her _type_. And if she doesn’t engage with his disgustingly obvious flirting then… then maybe she has someone else on her mind?

He shouldn’t be this thrilled about such a tiny and probably insignificant observation, but he still is.

Tuesday night is the first real moment he spends with her. They meet in her room after class, and bicker and eat junk food – well, he does, she just eats a poor salad and steals half his chips, hence why he always orders twice as much as he would if he was alone – in front of an old sci-fi movie that they both love-hate. Then he helps her rehearse her Biomedical research presentation. She seems very stressed about it, for some reason that he doesn’t quite understand because honestly at that point her presentation is perfect and he’s pretty sure she’s going to get top grade like always. He does the most sensible thing there is to do in that kind of situation and quizzes her about it until he himself knows it by heart, and until she gets so tired of his painstaking attention to details that it ends up in a small pillow fight.

It’s already midnight by then. Fitz is very reluctant to go back to his room, and Jemma seems a little too, despite the fact that she keeps repeating the time like a grumpy alarm clock. They’re sitting side by side on the floor, shoulder to shoulder, leaning their backs on the foot of her bed, and he thinks to himself he never wants this moment to end.

It’s during these moments that he’s the happiest he’s ever been.

He kind of wishes he could tell her that, but he doesn’t want to put too much pressure on her or to make her feel uncomfortable. He’s never been really good with talking about his feelings, and he knows where _that_ comes from. He’s never told Simmons about his father, she only knows that he left him and his mum when he was 10, and he doesn’t really want to tell her more about any of this.

She stretches her legs next to him with a yawn, and he gets distracted out of these unpleasant thoughts by the very pleasant sight. She has beautiful legs. Especially when they’re clad in those very thin, very tight leggings. She lets her head fall back on the edge of the bed and leans her shoulder a little more against him, and his heart does a tiny flip in his chest. “It’s 12:07 Fitz,” she groans, nudging him lightly, but like the other four times she’s told him what time it was, it doesn’t feel like she’s trying to kick him out of her room but more like she’d like the time to stop.

He definitely gets the feeling.

He leans his head back on the bed too, smiling to the ceiling. “I know, I’m getting up now.” When it becomes obvious that he’s not even trying, Simmons nudges him again with what sounds surprisingly like a breathless _giggle_ , and he turns to meet her eyes with raised eyebrows. “Oh wow Simmons,” he tells her, grinning, “you really _are_ tired, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you giggle in the years I’ve known you.”

“Shut up,” she grumbles grumpily, pretending to move away for a second before moving back, leaning even closer than before. They’re almost cuddling now. He’s not entirely sure they’ve ever done that before. He could extract his arm and put it around her shoulders, and her head would fall on his shoulder, which would be fantastic, he thinks. He’s not going to do that though.

They stay in a comfortable silence for a few minutes, and he thinks again about how much he never wants this to end. Maybe he could tell her after all. Or even something small, like ‘this is nice’, could do it. It’s obviously a pale rendering of what he really feels when he’s with her, but still. It could be good. Would it lead to something else? He’s not sure, and it’s too scary to think about right now. He’s building up his courage, trying to open his mouth and just _say_ it, but then she speaks again.

“Do you want to stay?”

And that’s… he was not expecting that at all. It’s so unexpected he’s not even sure how she said it. If she sounded hopeful, or on the contrary if she’s just offering to be polite. He really, really, _really_ wishes he could go back in time just to be sure. Oh God this is terrifying. He tries to steal a glance at her, but her head is ducked, she’s staring at her hands sitting in her lap, and he’s panicking. Does he want to stay? He himself doesn’t even know. Does he want to stay and see if something more happens? Does he want to stay and realize that nothing more will ever happen? He’s been disappointed before. Is he strong enough to relive the disappointment after their Sunday study session outside? He was so sure she was about to kiss him.

What if he’s reading all the signs wrong?

That wouldn’t be a first, he usually sucks at human interactions.

“No, that’s okay,” he tells her, and his voice sounds far away for some reason. “I’m gonna head back.”

“Oh.”

And, _crap_. She sounds hurt. Or disappointed. Or a little bit of both. Like she wants him to stay. What for? Is she expecting something of him? Does she want him to stay so that something can happen between them, or just because she wants to spend time with him because he’s her best friend? What does _he_ want? He knows what he wants, he wants to stay and find out what her lips taste like. But is he capable of such a thing? He’s pretty sure he’s not. He’s still not sure if she wants him that way. His experiment has been inconclusive most often than not, and even the small pieces of evidence he’s gathered that she might have feelings for him are not that conclusive either.

He’s extremely incompetent as far as reading social clues is concerned. He sucks at it. He has no idea what he’ll sign himself for if he stays. And that’s scary.

“I mean, you have to wake up super early for your Organic Chemistry class yeah?” he tells her, surprised at himself for how even his voice sounds. “My first class is at 10, I kinda need the sleep right now.”

She could let him sleep. He could stay, and they could kiss, and do all kinds of exciting things together in her bed, and then she could wake up, kiss his sleepy face all over and get up to get ready for her class while he sleeps. That would be amazing. In fantasy world.

She looks up to meet his eyes, and for a second he thinks she’s going to argue again, but then her shoulders slouch a little. “Okay,” she nods, and she sounds shorter than usual, and Fitz doesn’t know what to say to that. There’s a small silence, and it’s not as comfortable as it was a few minutes before, and his hands are starting to sweat.

He’s disappointed her.

Why does it feel so fucking awful?

“I’m sorry I–”

“Oh no Fitz that’s okay,” she cuts him, shaking her head a little. She moves away from him, sitting cross-legged to face him more fully, her knee brushing his hip. She offers him a sweet smile and a tilt of her head. “It makes sense,” she tells him, and she sounds fond now, not as disappointed as earlier, and it’s like an invisible weight flies off his shoulders at this sight.

“Okay,” he nods once, and her smile widens. They stare at each other for a moment, grinning, and he almost thinks he’s going to change his mind, because _this_ , this is definitely prolonged eye contact, and it makes his skin tingle and his heart pound in his chest, and her lips look so beautiful in the pale light of her bedside lamp and so, so kissable too, and what if he threw caution into the wind and just went for it?

“Shoo now,” she says, waving a hand in his face, and he snaps out of it, cheeks warming up instantly. “Before I change my mind.”

“Change your mind?” he asks without thinking, as she stands up and offers him her hands to do the same. He grabs them and she pulls him up, before handing him his backpack so he can grab his things.

“Change my mind and keep you here against your will,” she replies, not looking at him as she goes around the bed to take his phone off the charger she lent to him earlier, and he’s very grateful for that because his cheeks are now burning.

“I don’t have my pajamas,” he stupidly lets out the first thing that comes to his dumb genius mind, and he’s not sure if she scoffs or snorts in response. She turns around, giving him a look he can’t quite read, then shakes her head and walks back to him, handing him his phone. “Thanks?” he offers, a little shyly, and she smiles fondly, shaking her head again.

“Goodnight Fitz,” she tells him kindly, and he smiles back.

“Goodnight Simmons.”

Sometimes he wonders what would happen if he suddenly switched to calling her Jemma. Maybe he’ll try it someday. Not tonight though. He nods at her once, sliding his backpack on, and then he’s leaving her room, waving her goodbye one last time before closing the door. He walks back to his own room in a kind of daze that he can’t quite explain, and when he gets there, he falls back on his bed and falls asleep just like that, exhausted by his day.

That night he dreams about Jemma non-stop. It’s not unusual, which he thinks can be explained by the fact that they spend most of their time together, and also because he’s kind of hopelessly in love with her and everything, but this particular night it’s actually a lot more than usual. She’s everywhere. The center of most of his dreams – that he somehow remembers very clearly when he wakes up the next morning. In one of them, she was very mad at him, and he was trying to figure out why. In another one, she was sad and he was comforting her, and it ended up with them cuddling over the covers on her bed, which felt very, very nice. He also remembers them having to run away from Cybermen at some point during the night too. In any case, in his last and most memorable dream of the night in his opinion… they were engaging in very exciting and wonderful activities that resulted in him waking up full mast, and pretty glad he decided to sleep in his room rather than stay with her the previous night because that would have been fucking embarrassing, _again_.

It hadn’t come to mind as an argument not to stay, but now he thinks it really _should_ , if the situation arises again at some point. It’s just really embarrassing, is what it is.

After taking care of the situation, he grabs his phone and sees a text from Jem– _Simmons_ telling him that she hopes he slept well and that she can’t eat lunch with him today because she has to work on her Microbiology project with Kelly again. He groans loudly at his screen, and then types in a kind ‘alright, see ya later then!’ in response, before throwing his phone away a little too forcefully and it ends up on the floor with a soft ‘bonk’.

He perfectly knows what she would say if she was here right now. _Ugh, Fitz! Stop being so dramatic it’s just lunch._ This thought actually makes him smile, and despite the not very promising day ahead of him without his usual lunch with Simmons, he gets up a little more lightly than he would otherwise. He’ll see her later this afternoon anyway. Besides, lunch dates are overrated. Not that that’s something they do, ahem.

They sit together in their Compiler Theory class, with Professor Vaughn again. This particular class is actually a lot less boring than his History of SHIELD one, and is also one of the class that they have the most fun with being their very competitive selves. At first they used to compete against one another, but since they’ve figured out how much more intelligent they are when they team up, it’s always them against the rest of the class, and it’s no surprise to anyone when they finish their assignment and decipher their coded messages well before any of the other teams do.

They use their remaining time going over Simmons’s presentation one last time, because she’s giving it right after this class. She sounds very stressed again, and when Fitz smugly tells her that he could give it for her at that point if she wanted, she swats at his chest with a roll of her eyes, but her smile is deeply amused and he can’t help himself beaming at her in response.

He wishes her good luck at the end of their class, and she gives him a curt nod before walking away a little stiffly, which makes him smile to himself. There’s that warm feeling in his chest again as he watches her go, the one he’s pretty sure means that he’s completely in love with her at this point. It’s almost bittersweet, in a way. How is he supposed to get over her if she doesn’t like him too? When she’s so incredible and kind and smart?

He really has no idea.

He spends the next two hours in Nano-materials class thinking about her and hoping her presentation goes well. He doesn’t doubt it will, because it was pretty much perfect, and she knew everything by heart at this point, but still. He kind of wishes he could watch her give the presentation – even though biomedical research is definitely _not_ his cup of tea.

He rushes out of class as soon as it’s time, making his way to the Biology building to see her. He thinks to himself he just _has_ to do it, because he’s helped her so much on this presentation these last few days that he’s involved now, of course he’d want to know how things went. He’s not entirely sure why he’s looking for excuses to see her, but yeah.

When he reaches said building, she’s walking out of it surrounded by a bunch of other cadets. She’s talking animatedly with them, a wide smile stretching her lips, and Fitz takes a moment to just watch her from a distance, waiting for her to notice him – and not exactly willing to interrupt her conversation with the other three girls from her class.

His heart does a little flip in his chest when she spots him and her smile grows ever wider. She waves at him, excusing herself out of her conversation, and walks towards him with a light spring in her step, and damn if he could just kiss her right now he definitely would. His own lips are stretched into a knowing smile, and when she stops in front of him, he tilts his head to the side with a raised eyebrow. “So?”

“Eh,” she pretends to shrug, and he knows she’s doing that thing they sometimes do where they pretend like nothing when they’re actually very excited, so he rolls his eyes at her, earning himself an amused chuckle. “It went very well,” she says with an excited little jump, “I think I owe you a thank you.”

“Oh, well–”

“No really Fitz,” she cuts him as he shifts his weight from one foot to the other, a little embarrassed. “Thank you. I could have done it without you, but it wouldn’t have been as great as it was.”

He knows he’s blushing, and he knows she sees it, but the soft smile she’s giving him kind of makes up for it. He’s never really known what to do when praised – probably because he’s been so used to being belittle by his father when he was a kid, despite his mum’s constant attempts to make him see how untrue all that was – and somehow Jemma knows this. She doesn’t know it’s linked to his father, but she’s obviously noticed that he’s not comfortable in that kind of situation, so she doesn’t insist.

Instead, she points back to the three cadets that are still standing next to the Biology building entrance, and says with a kind smile: “The girls want to go out to celebrate, do you want to join?”

“Oh um, I don’t–”

“They won’t mind if you do Fitz,” she tells him before he can even figure out himself what he was about to say. “And actually,” she trails off, and he finds himself very anxious to know what she will say next. She bites her lower lip, then looks up to meet his eyes with a soft smile. “Actually I would really like for you to come.”

“Oh.” He has no idea what to say to that, the only thing he knows is that his heart is pounding and his hands are a little clammy.

“And I mean, they wanted to go to that Chinese place you like so much so…” she lets her voice trail off again, this time giving him an amused side-eye like she knows he can’t say no to _that_ , and he lets out a small chuckle.

“Damn Simmons, coaxing me with food into socializing, that’s low even for you,” he jokes, and she pretends to roll her eyes at him. Her lips are betraying her though, because they’re stretched into a happy little grin, and her eyes are twinkling, and really he doesn’t think he couldn’t lo– _like_ her anymore than he does at that very instant. “Yeah alright,” he pretends to sigh, and she does that little jump again, winding her arm around his and tugging him back towards the girls.

He knows Sally Webber from their first year Neurobiology class, and the other two introduce themselves as Mila Brookes and Ellen Harris. Fitz doesn’t really like the pointed look they’re giving him when Simmons announces that he’ll join them for their little dinner celebration or whatever it is that they’re doing, but to his relief they don’t make any comment about it – or at least not to his face anyway – and just, roll with it.

As they make their way out of campus and to that Chinese restaurant that he definitely loves, Simmons tells him all about how her presentation went, what her professor said and what questions she had to answer, and it’s actually so exactly like most of their usual conversations that he _almost_ forgets about the other three girls tagging along.

(He’s being rude, they’re not tagging along, _he_ is. Still kind of feels like it though.)

Simmons and him don’t usually hang out with other people like that. Not after class anyway. They study with people sometimes, but not very often. Or, well, that’s not exactly true actually. Simmons is an odd bird, but she’s a lot better at social things than he is. She probably has more friends at the Academy than he does – considering the fact that he thinks he has just the one friend, it’s not that hard – and so maybe this kind of hanging-out situation is not as unusual for her as it is for him.

Still, she does spend most of her time with him anyway – as proven by last weekend – so this is definitely not their usual settings, especially not on a Wednesday night. All that to say that he’s a little nervous. Then again, it might be useful for his experiment. Seeing how she is around other people. He also wonders if she’s going to be different with him than she usually is when they’re alone.

By the end of the night – they don’t stay out too long, it’s the middle of the week after all – he’s exhausted from too much socializing and he now knows three things.

The first one is, that the three cadets they went out with actually thought that Simmons and him were a _couple_. Sally asked him about it when Simmons went to the bathroom, and he blushed and sputtered out a negative answer that made the three of them laugh a lot, which was absolutely terrible and almost made him want to just leave right then and there – but he’d already ordered his Chow Mein, and he definitely couldn’t let that go to waste, or abandon Simmons either, for that matter. That would have been rude.

The second one is, that Simmons lied to him when she said once that she didn’t like to go to this particular restaurant, and the reason for that is that she just feels bad about eating out too often and is trying to limit her take-out consumption, which honestly doesn’t make any sense to him because she looks perfect anyway – he almost tells her that, but luckily for him he stops himself right before he does, and honestly that’s a good thing because that would definitely not have helped with the three other cadets’ assumption that they’re together.

The third one is, that Jemma Simmons acts a little different with him when around other people. He’s not sure what that means at all, but she’s not as prompt to bicker with him as she usually is, despite his attempts to kind of trigger it – because let’s be honest, arguing with her is always the best. She actually doesn’t pay him much attention that night, which is a little weird. Or, actually, she does at the beginning, but then after he comes back from the bathroom at some point, she’s deep into her conversation with Ellen and barely talks to him for the rest of the evening.

He’s not very happy about it, but then he also feels like a twat for it, because obviously he’s not entitled to her attention, of course she can have other friends and talk with them and socialize and whatnot. He can’t help being a little grumpy about it though, because why would she want him there if not to talk to him just a little bit too? But then he also feels guilty about being mad at her because she’s amazing and he’s not being fair, and really he’s actually glad he doesn’t have to walk her all the way back to her building and talk some more with the three other cadets because he’s _exhausted_.

He collapses on his bed as soon as he’s made it back to his room, and dozes off for a few minutes before his phone chimes in with a new text. It’s from Simmons, telling him she hopes he had a good night, and thanking him once again for helping her on her presentation. He lets out a long sigh as a pleasant feeling makes its way through his heart because of it, slowly but surely replacing the slight annoyance he was still very much feeling towards her and the whole evening in general.

And honestly, he can't believe how much of a lost cause he is. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ♥
> 
> My personal favorite line of this chapter is, "I don't have my pajamas."


	5. Making plans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’re awfully chipper this morning.”  
> Fitz looks up from his desk, only just realizing he’d been absentmindedly humming to himself while setting his workplace in order. Simmons is looking at him with a small smile, and he shrugs under her eyes. “A full day working in the lab with you does that I guess,” he says without thinking, going back to rummaging through his drawer in search of a particular screwdriver he knows he’s going to extensively need today.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh look guys! I can't plan anything! :D So, as I said on Tumblr I'm a little late with this chapter, and also had to cut it in two parts because I wrote way too much xD so yeah, two more chapters coming your way after this one to finish this fic! I won't cut the last one in half, I'm sure of that, so yeah, definitely probably maybe 7 chapters for sure in this story LOL  
> Hope you enjoy my writing after this nonsensical author's note, YAY!

**The Scientific Method**

**Chapter 5: Making plans**

“Morning Simmons.”

“Good morning Fitz.”

He carefully sets the mug of hot tea beside her on the bench, and she looks up with a warm smile that makes his heart flutter in his chest. Since Simmons brings him coffee and breakfast on Sundays, he’s decided a while back that he was in charge of bringing tea on Thursday mornings. It’s his thing, he’s been doing this for as long as he can remember. He loves Thursdays. Best day of the week by _far_. Fridays are pretty great too, and obviously Sundays are usually a lot of fun, but there’s nothing better than Thursdays in his opinion.

“You’re awfully chipper this morning.”

Fitz looks up from his desk, only just realizing he’d been absentmindedly humming to himself while setting his workplace in order. Simmons is looking at him with a small smile, and he shrugs under her eyes. “A full day working in the lab with you does that I guess,” he says without thinking, going back to rummaging through his drawer in search of a particular screwdriver he _knows_ he’s going to extensively need today.

“Oh.”

There’s something unusual in her voice, in her reaction, and it catches his attention instantly. He looks up again, surprised. She’s not looking at him but fidgeting with empty tests tubes on her lab bench. She’s also smiling, quite shyly, and her cheeks are a little flushed, and he suddenly realizes what he just said, which makes him blush in return. She glances at him, then quickly averts her eyes when they meet his, and suddenly his heart is pounding.

He’s looking for something to say, because the silence surrounding them is tense and _different_ , but then an older cadet that Fitz is pretty sure is either named Colin or Connor barges in the lab, making them both jump, startled. “Fitzsimmons!” he exclaims, ignoring Fitz as he pesters about how dangerous that could have been, “tomorrow night, the Boiler Room, we’re celebrating Murphy’s early acceptance in Sci-Ops, you’re summoned!”

And, before either of them can reply anything, Colin/Connor runs off, slamming the door behind him. Fitz frowns, letting out a dismissive scoff without even thinking. He’s not even sure who Murphy is anyway. Maybe some student from their Chemistry class? He can’t even put a face on the cadet’s name, why would he even want to go celebrate one of their achievement because he’s been ‘ _summoned_ ’? This is ridiculous.

But then he glances at Jem– _Simmons_ , and sees the thoughtful expression on her face, and his heart skips a beat. A fairly paranoid part of himself instantly wonders if Murphy is a guy she likes, but then he scolds himself because he’s definitely jumping to conclusion when she’s just looking like she’s maybe considering the idea to go. When she realizes he’s looking at her she shakes her head a little, giving him a tiny smile and a shrug. “It could be interesting.”

“Interesting?” he repeats, a little lost, and she makes a face.

“Fun? I don’t know,” she mumbles, busying herself with something on her computer, and somehow he thinks she’s a little embarrassed, which he can’t really explain.

Her gestures seem a little strained somehow, and he watches her in apprehension for a minute, not entirely sure what’s going on. If she wants to go, then why not ask him? He might be a grumpy asocial but he can still go out too. He said yes last time she asked, a week ago actually. Maybe she thinks it was a one time thing or something. It didn’t really end well, now that he thinks about it, with the entire Ophelia thing and her being maybe jealous and him coming up with his experiments to try and figure out if she likes him and… stuff. Yeah, alright. It was unusual of them to go to the Boiler Room the previous week, and maybe it’s his fault that they don’t do that very often.

But if he’s right and she _was_ considering the idea just now…

He hesitates for another minute, pondering, then decides that for once he could just go for it. “Do you wanna go?” he asks, not exactly looking at her because he’s a little embarrassed now for some reason, and also his heart is pounding in his chest and his hands are a little clammy.

She looks up in surprise, shaking her head reflexively it seems. “Oh Fitz we don’t have to,” she assures a little awkwardly, “I know you’d rather stay in, I–”

“No I mean I’m, I’m okay with it, if you want to, it’s–” he trails off, mouth a little dry under her gaze. “You’re right, it could be fun.”

“Oh.” And there it is again, that shy smile that makes his heart jump high in his chest, paired with a small nod. “Great.”

“Great,” he nods too, and they smile at each other before both looking away at the same time.

And his heart is still pounding _hard_ , because for some reason, this feels different. This feels like something else, something that they’ve never done before, which doesn’t make any sense because they’ve made plans thousands of times before. But this time… this time it feels like _more_. It takes him a little while to really put words on it, and when he does, he audibly gasps, and has to pretend to cough to hide it.

Why does it feel like they’re agreeing to go on a _date_?

Is that what it is? Is that what she _wants_? Is he imagining things again? Oh God she’s looking at him now. He makes a face at her and she raises a curious eyebrow at him, but then he hurries to the other side of their lab to fish his latest project from one of the shelves, escaping her thoughtful gaze. He forces himself through deep breaths, trying to stop his hands from trembling from nerves, but it currently seems impossible.

What if she wants this to be a date? Can someone have their first date at a party in a bar? Can the Boiler Room even be considered a bar anyway? It’s a lot more than just a bar, sure, but then again that’s not the problem right now, _what if Jemma Simmons wants to go on a date with him?!_ Neither of them ever said the word _date_ per se in the conversation, but it definitely feels like it in his opinion, although he can’t quite say _why_. Is he stupidly getting his hopes up once again? What should he do, if she indeed intends it to be a date? Oh God he’s never even been on a date before. He’s going to mess things up big time, isn’t he? Ugh, but he’s not even sure it’s a date anyway.

Is he imagining things again?

Things are a little – _a lot_ – stressful for the next half-hour, until he decides to just stop thinking about it altogether, and focus on science. That’s a safe thing. He knows what he’s doing with that, at least most of the time. He loses himself in his work on his latest project – he’s been thinking about miniaturizing one of the drones SHIELD sometimes use for recon missions – and by the time Simmons nudges him in the ribs, telling him they should grab some lunch, he’s successfully disassembled it and isolated the primary components that he could possibly miniaturize. His mind is running a thousand mile with possible ways to do just that, and he’s so excited about it that he makes complete abstraction of the ‘is it a date’ thing and talks Simmons’s ear off about it throughout their half-hour break – they’re not messing about on Thursdays, taking full advantage of their lab and spending as much time there as they can.

Thursdays really are the best.

As always, Simmons gives him extremely good insight on his project, and is as excited about it as he is. She tells him about her project on neurotoxins as well while waiting for their tea in the break room, and he offers a couple of suggestions that actually brings that look on her face that he loves so much. The one where her eyes almost sparkle in excitement, and she gets that little faraway expression that translates perfectly how fast her mind is running with his suggestion, her smile as bright as the sun.

He desperately wants to kiss her in these particular moments.

He lets himself think about it for a moment, just a small moment. How he could just take the two steps that separate them, grab her by the hips, and kiss her. Or maybe cup her cheeks softly and lean his forehead against hers, and tell her what he’s been dying to tell her, and then she’d smile shyly, and when he’d finally touch her lips with his she’d kiss him right back and–

“Fitz?”

“Huh?”

He blinks twice, snapping back to reality, and she chuckles.

“Were you even listening to me?” she asks, tilting her head with a curious but amused look.

Damn, now his cheeks are burning. “Um, maybe not that last part?” he admits with a face.

She laughs again, then to his surprise pokes him in the chest with the clean spoon she’s holding. “What were you thinking about?” she says, pretending to look stern, and he feels himself blush even more under her brown eyes.

“Nothing?”

He’s not surprised when she raises an inquisitive eyebrow at that not very convincing answer. Luckily for him though, the kettle turns off before she can say anything, and she turns her attention to it. He watches her preparing their tea, her practiced gestures as familiar to him as her smile or the way she scrunches her nose sometimes when she laughs. “There you go,” she tells him, her fingers brushing his as she hands him his mug.

“Thanks,” he says, thinking to himself he’s lucky he didn’t stammer because honestly just the brush of her fingers against his is enough to send his mind spiraling. This is definitely getting out of hand. Pun _not_ intended. “Ready to go back?”

“Always,” she retorts with a smirk, and he rolls his eyes a little, which makes her chuckle. They walk back to their lab – how he loves thinking _that_ – in companionable silence. The rest of the afternoon is extremely prolific, for both of them. He’s extremely happy with the progress he’s made with his drone, and she’s delighted to tell him all about presynaptic and postsynaptic neurotoxins. By the time they’re politely kicked out of the lab by the janitor, it’s already almost 9. Fitz is very tempted to offer to go out to get something to eat, but they’ve already gone out the day before, and since they agreed on going out to the Boiler Room together the next day too…

Oh wait _no_ , no thinking about this.

One week ago he was studying for their holographic engineering test, in her room, where he’d then end up falling asleep and wake up with his cock pressed against her arse.

Well _fuck_ , no thinking about _that_ either.

He wonders if she thinks about it half as much as he does. Then he mentally slaps himself because come _on._

“So what d’you wanna do?”

He blinks, glancing at her, cheeks a little hot again. His hormonal teenage brain really is the absolute _worst_. “Um, I don’t know? Probably should head to bed, long day tomorrow.”

“Right, yes.”

She’s sounding a little weird, and he turns to her as they walk out of the building, frowning. “Unless you had something in mind that you wanted to do?”

“No you’re right,” she sighs, shrugging a little. “I’ll see you tomorrow anyway.”

“Yeah,” he nods, not entirely sure why she seems so bummed about it. When he meets her eyes though, she gives him a fond smile that makes his heart soar in his chest. “I can still walk you to your building though, if you want?”

“You’re too sweet,” she retorts, shaking her head lightly, then chuckles when he scoffs.

“I’m just being a decent friend,” he mumbles, and is surprised to hear her sigh again. She’s not looking at him anymore, and sadly he can’t read her expression because it’s too dark outside. They make their way towards her dorm in silence, and there’s something unusual about this silence, although he can’t quite say why exactly.

It lingers around them even when they reach her dorm and stop just outside the front door. She turns to face him, both hands grasping the straps of her backpack, and she’s biting her lip and his brain kind of disconnects all of a sudden. He has no idea what to say, not when she’s standing there looking at him, and God she just looks so beautiful right now, he really wants nothing more but to kiss her.

He doesn’t get the time to even think about working up the courage to just go for it, because she smiles softly, shaking her head a little, and says quietly: “Goodnight Fitz.”

She takes half a step back as he opens his mouth to reply, but then apparently changes her mind, and lunges forward to press a small kiss to his left cheek.

A teeny, tiny kiss on his left cheek.

Her lips barely graze his skin, leaving a burning mark behind them, and he can’t _think_. Before he can even say anything, or do anything, or _think_ anything, she’s already walking away, opening the door to her building and disappearing inside, and he just stands there, completely awestruck, his heart pounding loudly in his ears.

He doesn’t know how long he stands there, desperately trying not to reach up and brush his fingers against where he can still feel her lips on his skin – because obviously that would be ridiculous. Then the thought that if she happened to look out her window she’d see him standing there like an idiot comes to mind, and he springs back to life, heading back towards his own room in a fuzzy daze.

It’s only when he’s collapsed on his bed, his chest almost hurting for some reason, that he realizes he’d been barely breathing this whole time. He lets out a very shaky breath, pressing his palms to his eyelids, mouth extremely dry.

Simmons kissed him. Granted, it was only a quick peck on the cheek, but they never do that. Paired with all the things he’s observed this last week… does it really mean that… God, he can’t even form the thought in his head, too heady to even comprehend any of this. He’s being ridiculous. It was just a small kiss, she barely even leaned into him, she just pressed her lips for a split second against his cheeks and _God_ for the first time tonight Jemma’s lips came in contact with his _skin_.

They’ve never kissed before. Never, ever. He’s definitely sure of _that_.

He tries not to lose himself in what ifs, but it’s hard with his brain running a thousand miles an hour. What if… he’d been more eloquent, what if she hadn’t run away so fast after kissing him, what if he’d caught her hand and asked why she did that, what if…

He’s not entirely sure how or when he falls asleep, but he’s woken up by his blaring alarm clock and he’s still over the covers and fully dressed. The back of his neck is stiff from sleeping in a weird position, and he jumps into the shower to try and loosen up a little and look like a decent human being again.

He’s putting his shoes on a little while later, when he realizes what he’s _actually_ doing. He picked that blue shirt that brings out his eyes – according to his _mum_ , but Jemma had been there at the time, and had _agreed_ – and spent an unusual amount of time trying to tame his curls, like he unconsciously wants to look _nice._ And now that he’s realizing it, he definitely knows why, and it’s making his stomach churn in worry and his heart stammer in his chest.

Then he remembers where he was a week prior – in Jemma’s _bed_ – and also what happened then – involuntary body reaction ahem –, and he shivers despite himself. It’s only been a week, but it definitely feels more like a life time ago. He’s not sure why. He still has a few minutes in front of him before he has to go get breakfast, so he takes a moment to read through his experiment notebook – and write about the unexpected peck on the cheek from last night.

He’s stalling, and he’s deeply aware of it, but he can’t help it.

Change has always been hard for him. He doesn’t handle it well. But maybe he just needs to suck it up this time, because there’s actually a good chance that this particular change might lead to him being even happier than he already is, which would definitely be worth it, right?

“Guess we’ll have to see,” he mumbles to himself. He takes one last look in the small mirror in his bathroom, grasping the straps of his backpack. He thinks he’s looking different than he usually does, and he wonders if she’s going to notice it or not. The thought makes his heart flutter in his chest and he forces himself to stop thinking about any of it and just go.

When he reaches the cafeteria and finds her sitting at their usual spot, he’s feeling almost light-headed from apprehension. Hopefully she doesn’t notice him not eating much when he usually eats a lot for breakfast. He’s pretty sure she’ll notice, because she’s so observant and smart and beautiful – he’s not entirely sure why the last one is relevant, but yeah. That’s pretty much all that’s going through his mind as he walks towards her, trying to keep his hands from shaking too much and spilling his tea everywhere.

He sets his tray down on the table, and she looks up, hazel eyes meeting his blue ones, and he thinks his heart stops for a couple of seconds before restarting again. She smiles softly, but there’s something different in her gaze, maybe a hint of nervousness, that he can’t quite explain. Or maybe he _can_ , because he knows she’s probably seeing it in his eyes as well.

“Hey,” he croaks, sitting down in front of her. He tries to give her a smile, but his mouth is very dry again, and he’s not sure he’s succeeding at all.

“Hey,” she says, pinching her lips a little – which is quite distracting. “Slept well?”

“Mhm, you?”

“Yeah,” she nods, eyes trained on her porridge, and he’s as thankful about it as he is disappointed, for some reason.

They don’t talk much after that. He’s not entirely sure what he expected, but probably not for things to feel so tense and awkward between them. It’s not a bad awkward though. He doesn’t know how to explain it to himself. He steals glances at her as he eats, and wonders if she’s doing the same when he’s not looking. He meets her eyes once, and they smile at each other before looking away, and his heart is pounding the whole time.

It’s kind of funny, because one week ago, they were sitting right at this table and pretending like he hadn’t just woken up with his erection pressed against her bum after spending the night in her bed, and things definitely felt less awkward than they do now.

Maybe it’s because she’s the one who did something different, while last time it kind of was him. She’d let himself know that she didn’t mind by behaving normally, offering him an exit and the opportunity to just never talk about it. Maybe he needs to do the same thing in return, because maybe she regrets kissing him. Or maybe she didn’t regret it, but now that things are definitely a little weird between them, well now she does.

He can’t have that. He doesn’t want her to regret anything. Especially when he was so very okay with her kissing him like that. He can’t tell her that, but he can behave like he’s okay, make her see that nothing has to change if she doesn’t want it to. He can do that.

“Hey, so what do you think about that Biophysics project from the other day?” he asks, and maybe his voice sounds a little different than usual, but he thinks it’s okay. She looks up in barely disguised surprise, before smiling a little shyly. After that she launches herself in an expose – which, to his satisfaction, includes the fact that her assigned partner Cooper is apparently quite incompetent in her opinion –, and he smiles to himself because it’s like things instantly refocus and they go back to being their usual selves in a matter of seconds.

When they’re done with breakfast, they walk side by side to their Astrophysics class, still talking animatedly about Biophysics and how Pearson should really just pair them up together like everyone else because that would be so much more interesting than working with other people – Simmons even laughs at his face when he complains about being paired with _Milton_ , and he pretends to look hurt, which makes her laugh even more.

They’re a little early, so they wait in the hallway, leaning against the wall, and as more and more cadets arrive, they fall into a companionable silence once again, smiling to each other whenever their eyes meet.

“Hey Fitz.”

He’d been just stealing another glance towards Jemma, and he jumps in surprise at the greeting. He turns around and sees Ophelia, who’s standing beside him with a smile and what can only be described as a _very_ revealing neckline. Obviously he’s not one to stare – or at least he tries not to be too _obvious_ about it, ahem – but he wasn’t expecting it at all and it catches him by surprise. He kind of needs a couple of seconds to reboot, and from Ophelia’s knowing little smile, she’s obviously noticed.

“Oh um, hi Ophelia,” he stammers, cheeks a little hot.

“So are you going to that party tonight?” she asks, leaning even closer, and now he knows he’s blushing really hard, and he kind of wants to look to Simmons for help but that would probably look weird, and he doesn’t want to embarrass her or something.

“Oh um, yeah.”

“Good,” she nods once with a pleased smile, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, “I hope I’ll see you there then.”

“Right, yes.”

She presses his arm once before walking away, and he feels very embarrassed about what just happened, although he can’t quite explain it. He turns towards Simmons to apologize – even though he doesn’t know why he’s feeling the compelling need to – but she’s not beside him anymore. He frowns in surprise, then notices that the door to the auditorium is open now, and he figures she stepped inside without him while he was talking with Ophelia.

It’s surprising really, and it gets even weirder when he steps inside the auditorium and sees her sitting at their usual spot looking very busy setting up her things on the desk. He slowly walks towards her, and when he sits down next to her it becomes kind of obvious that she’s avoiding his eyes, and he doesn’t really know what’s going on.

“You okay?” he asks shyly, and she gives him a quick side-glance before nodding once and looking forward again, tapping the end of her pen on her open notebook.

It only takes him a couple more minutes before his brain comes up with a possible explanation, and he has a hard time not gulping audibly because of it. Because, what if she’s a little jealous again? The situation seems very similar to last Friday night, where she kind of stormed out of the Boiler Room after seeing him talk to Ophelia – which then kind of prompted his little experiment to try and figure out if she actually likes him or not.

So what if she is? What if she doesn’t like seeing him talk with Ophelia because she’s so obviously trying to, um, _seduce_ him? What if she doesn’t like it because she wants to seduce _him_? Another alternative would be that she likes _Ophelia_ , but he’s pretty sure that wouldn’t make any sense. She’s only ever gone out with guys as far as he knows, and anyway he’s never seen her talk with Ophelia in the two years he’s known her. She could obviously be bisexual, _yes_ , but then again, _he_ ’s the one she _kissed_ on the cheek the night before, not Ophelia – that he knows of –, so there’s that.

Oh God, does Jemma Simmons actually like him? For real?

Are they really actually going on a _date_ later tonight?

How is he supposed to focus on anything when either of those things are apparent possibilities?

And then, more importantly, what is he supposed to do about it?

He could ask her out. For real. Ask her to dinner, some place nice. Can he do that? Does he need to make 100% sure that she really is into him first? God, he has no idea. This is definitely stressing him out a _lot_.

His next two classes are kind of a blur, and then they meet up for lunch and things are a little awkward again, until she mentions their holographic engineering test from last week and they start to bicker about who’s gonna get the best score and why. Turns out _he_ does, and she sulks for a little while, which makes his heart pound happily in his chest because she looks unfairly cute when she does that.

She tells him he’s being insufferable, and he intensifies the smug little look on his face on purpose in response, which makes her roll her eyes to try and hide her fond and amused smile. After that they get scolded at by their professor for not paying attention, and Fitz tries not to laugh at the blush of embarrassment on Simmons’s face because of it. She obviously sees the amusement on his face, because she weakly kicks him under the holotable, and he has to bite his lips hard not to laugh at the murderous look on her face.

He doesn’t even try to hide his disappointment when the class end and they have to go their separate ways, her to her Entomology class, and him to his Artificial Intelligence class – he’s definitely not looking forward to seeing Ophelia again. She must have seen it on his face, or maybe she’s feeling the same thing, because she bumps his shoulder with hers with an amused smile as they exit their class.

“I’ll see you at the Boiler Room, yeah?” she asks with a questioning look, and he nods without thinking.

“Yes, yup, uh-huh.”

He’s not sure what she reads on his face – apart from the obvious embarrassment he’s feeling because of his not at all eloquent answer – but then she’s biting down her smile and he gets distracted by her mouth once again. Part of his mind wonders if she has any idea of what she’s doing to him. Then he actually remembers that she most definitely _felt_ what she’s doing to him that particular morning a week ago, and his cheeks are suddenly burning.

Then again, maybe she thinks it was just morning wood or something. Ugh, yeah she probably thinks that, since she did say that day that it was ‘perfectly natural’. Why, why, _why_ is he thinking about all this again? Standing in the middle of a crowded hallway? How dumb a genius does he have to be to do that?

“See you later then,” she tells him with a sweet smile, which he thinks probably means that she cannot read his mind, psychic link everyone keeps saying they have be damned. He’s very thankful for it.

“Yup, see you later.”

And then there’s a small, hesitant moment between them. Cadets are weaving around them, speeding towards their classes, as they both stand there looking at each other without moving, and suddenly all he can think about is how she kissed him yesterday. He wonders if she’s thinking about it too. If she’s about to do it again or not. He thinks he would definitely like it if she does.

But then the moment fades away and she gives him a small smile, poking him in the side teasingly before walking away. He pretends to mumble about it, and cannot help his wide smile when he hears her laugh in response. He looks back to her, and she’s looking back at him with a big smile too, and _wow_ he’s never felt this excited and terrified about anything in his life before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, chapter 6 is almost done, there's a little bird telling me that comments make me go "zjaklejlkazjelkjzeakzje" and makes me update fics faster so yeah, just saying! ;D *evil laughter*


	6. Jealousy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And he also realizes at the same time that she’s wearing a dress, and his brain short-circuits for a couple of seconds because of it. He’s never seen Jemma wearing a dress before. It’s a nice black dress, with straps and a slightly more plunging neckline than the usual shirts she wears which is extremely distracting in his opinion. He still manages to notice that she’s wearing a little more make-up than she usual does, with her hair up in an intricate bun, and he thinks she’s looking very beautiful.  
> The question is, can he find the courage to tell her?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And with this chapter, we shall reach 1000 hits! :D So exciting! :D I hope you guys like this chapter, I personally do LOL xD

**The Scientific Method**

**Chapter 6: Jealousy**

The next three hours without Jem– _Simmons_ are both excruciatingly long and frighteningly short at the same time. Ophelia tries to coax him into a conversation at least three times, and he thinks he’s getting better at dodging her overall. Then he gets back to his room and tries not to stress too much about what seems more and more likely to be some kind of date between him and Jemma.

_Jemma_.

His heart is beating hard and fast in his chest as he makes his way to the Boiler Room at around 9 – the time they agreed they would meet at. He’s a little early, because he definitely didn’t want to be late, and he’s trying to decide if he should wait for her inside or outside when he realizes that she’s early as well.

And he also realizes at the same time that she’s wearing a _dress_ , and his brain short-circuits for a couple of seconds because of it. He’s never seen Jemma wearing a dress before. It’s a nice black dress, with straps and a slightly more plunging neckline than the usual shirts she wears which is extremely distracting in his opinion. He still manages to notice that she’s wearing a little more make-up than she usual does, with her hair up in an intricate bun, and he thinks she’s looking very beautiful.

The question is, can he find the courage to tell her?

“Hi Fitz.”

She’s seen him, and she’s walked up to him while he was busy being distracted by everything that’s _her_ – also, boobs –, and it takes him a moment to remember how to even speak properly. “Hi Simmons,” he says, his voice a little hoarse, and then he curses himself because _fuck_ , that was actually the perfect moment to start calling her _Jemma_.

It would have told her that this was different, that he wanted things to be different between them. She’d have picked up on it, obviously, because she’s so smart and amazing. Unless all of this doesn’t mean anything to her, and then he would just have called her Jemma for nothing like an idiot.

“Shall we?”

God, she’s looking at him with a tiny frown now, he’s being the worse idiot ever in the entire date-or-not-date history. “Right, yes, sorry,” he nods, and she smiles a small thing that makes his heart jump in his chest. They walk side by side to the door – because he’s not fast enough in gathering the courage to offer her his arm, _ugh_ – and when they reach it, he halts with his hand on the handle, taking a quick breath. “You look–”

But then the door opens from the inside and he stumbles forward a little, not even able to finish his freaking sentence. Jemma grabs his arm to steady him as a couple of exuberant cadets exit the Boiler Room, and the look she gives him is somehow both amused and annoyed at the same time. “Come on,” she says, tugging at his arm. They both walk inside, Fitz definitely noticing how she’s not letting go of his arm in the process, and make their way down to the Boiler Room.

They’ve barely taken a couple of steps towards the bar before they encounter none other than Ophelia, who almost runs into Fitz in a fit of very ridiculous giggles in his opinion. “Fitz, you made it,” she exclaims enthusiastically, very obviously ignoring Jemma, which he finds extremely rude. “I’m so glad to see you tonight.” She’s leaning close again, and Jemma lets go of his arm as she does, and _ugh_ can’t she just take a hint already?

“Yeah yeah okay,” he mumbles, taking a step away with a grimace and a glance towards Jemma – who’s apparently trying to look anywhere but at him or Ophelia, which sucks. “I’m gonna go, yeah.”

And then he does something that he’s pretty sure neither of them – Ophelia, Simmons or him – expected at all: he grabs Jemma’s hand and leads her toward the bar area, completely ignoring Ophelia’s attempt at dragging him in yet another conversation. He tries not to marvel at the fact that he’s holding Jemma’s hand, or the fact that it fits perfectly in his, or the fact that she’s not snatching it out of his hold and just follows him without a word. There’s something extremely freeing about acting without _thinking_. He’s definitely not familiar with that.

When they reach the bar he lets go of her hand, and she doesn’t say anything. He knows his cheeks must be very red at this point, and he also knows that she sees it because he can feel her eyes on him as he tries to catch the bartender’s attention. His heart is pounding in his chest, and he’s back to overthinking everything. Maybe if he drinks a lot he can go back to being spontaneous like that. Ugh, but then again, he doesn’t want his maybe-first-date with Jemma ending up with him being pissed on American beers.

Can you even have a first date at a party?

Ugh he really doesn’t know shit.

“So Ophelia’s–”

“Yeah let’s not–” he cuts her with another face, progressively getting more and more annoyed at the bartender for not spotting him. “Thanks,” he adds after a second, because he doesn’t want to sound rude, but if there’s one thing he definitely doesn’t want to talk about, it’s Ophelia’s tendency to just, _ugh_. He chances a glance at Jemma, but she’s not looking at him anymore. She’s actually trying to catch the bartender’s attention too now, and when the guy spots her after only a couple of seconds, Fitz cannot help his disbelieving snort. She gives him a meaningful side-glance that makes him grin before placing their usual orders, and alright, _maybe_ he lets his eyes slide down a little before snapping back to her face when she turns to him.

“Do you want to find a table?” she asks with a raised eyebrow, and he nods a little dumbly, which makes her smirk in return. He wonders if she knows what she’s doing to him right now. With her dress, and her smile, and the soft curve of her neck out in the open like that, and the way she’s looking at him, and _wow_ he really, really hopes he’s not wrong about any of this and she really is into him because otherwise he has no idea how he can go back to just being best friends who don’t fantasize daily about each other.

He’ll do it, if he really has to, because not having her in his life would be the absolute worst, but he really, really hopes he won’t have to.

He really, really wants to kiss her. And tell her how much she means to him, how he can’t imagine his life without her, how perfect she is and how lucky _he_ is to have her in his life. And do a lot of other very enticing things that he should _not_ be thinking about right now.

Somehow though, it seems that the cosmos starts working against them as soon as they get their beers from the bartender. They barely have time to sit down at the table they found that Kelly and another girl from Jemma’s Microbiology class show up and drag her away from him to apparently prove something to some random other cadet that Fitz kind of absolutely hates right now. Obviously he sees it coming, but not even two minutes later Ophelia shows up at _his_ side, and he’s forced to pretend to look interested in whatever she’s telling him for a little while before he’s had enough and pretends like he needs to go to the bathroom to escape her.

He looks for Simmons instead, but she’s still looking busy proving whatever it is that her classmates want her to prove, and he sulks a little before getting dragged into a game of pool with a bunch of cadets from his Nanotech class – he can never resist a game of pool, because it definitely appeals to his very competitive self, so there’s that. He kicks their asses real hard, so they convince him to go for a round of darts too, and he kicks their asses there too, although not quite as hard. The game lasts a little longer than he thought it would, and when he finally manages to get away from his classmates, it’s to find Jemma lost deep into an argument about dissection techniquesand he can’t bring himself to interrupt her because one, that would be rude, and two, that kind of subject absolutely grosses him out and he does not want to hear a thing about it.

Sadly, this means he gets ambushed by Ophelia again, and after ten minutes he tries to stir her in Cooper’s direction because they’re honestly both so extremely annoying that it must mean they should get along well, in his opinion. It takes him a while, because yes, he wants to get rid of her and make her understand that he’s not in the least bit interested, but he also doesn’t want to be rude or mean to her at the same time. It’s a fine line he’s treading really.

Too much time has passed once he’s finally managed for good to make her understand that she should try to find someone else to flirt with. He tries to find Simmons after that, but she’s nowhere to be seen, so he grabs another beer and waits on his own, carefully keeping an eye out in the hope to find her. He’s growing more and more restless on his stool, his knee bouncing uncontrollably, and after a while he kind of downs his beer and stands up to try and look for her around the Boiler Room again.

What if she left? She wouldn’t have left without telling him, right? Why would she leave anyway when she was the one who wanted to come in the first place?

He’s barely made three steps before Sally Webber intercepts him, poking him in the chest with a stern expression. She’s looking kind of drunk he thinks, although he might be mistaken because he mostly can’t tell about these things, usually. “Leopold Fitz,” she greets, and he makes a face at that.

“What?” he retorts impatiently, craning his head to try and see if he can spot Simmons anywhere.

“You know Simmons digs you right?”

This effectively catches his attention and he looks back at her in shock, sputtering. “What?”

“Why are you talking with that Ophelia girl?” she snaps instead of repeating, and something in her expression tells him she’s pissed at him, although he can’t quite understand why since none of this concerns her in the slightest.

“I’m not–” he exclaims, throwing his hands up in annoyance, because honestly, this night was supposed to be his maybe-first-date with Jemma, and instead it’s been all about how the cosmos apparently doesn’t want them to be together. “ _She_ ’s talking to me, _I_ ’m not!”

“Yeah well whatever,” Sally tells him with an impatient sigh, poking him in the chest again, and he scoffs indignantly. “You need to get your shit together Fitz, because she’s not going to wait around eternally for you to catch up.”

“What d’you mean?” he asks despite himself, frowning, and the only answer she gives him is a meaningful nod and glance to something behind him. He turns around slowly, and feels his heart drop hard in his chest.

Because Jemma is there, standing very close to one very noticeable cabbage head, laughing and smiling and being her absolutely beautiful self to someone that is not _him_.

To stupid _Milton_ , of all people!

_And_ , the asshole is definitely staring at her _breasts_.

“Shite.”

Fitz tells himself he does what he does next for one reason, but it’s actually two and he knows it. The main reason he invokes in his head is the promise she had him make about a year ago, that he would never let her get back with any of her exes. The other, sneakier one, is that he’s extremely jealous to see her leaning against that stupid cabbage head of an asshole like _that_.

_It should be_ me _._

“Jemma!” Oops. Wow, of all the moments he could have started calling her that, he’s chosen the one where he’s almost bubbling with jealousy, what a perfect dick move that is. “Simmons,” he adds after a second, which sounds extremely stupid, “what are you doing?”

She turns to him and away from Milton, and he instantly spots her flushed cheeks and her dilated pupils. “Fitzy!” she exclaims happily, and apprehension floods his system instantly, because she definitely sounds like she’s been drinking a lot more than she usually does. “You’re here!”

To his great surprise she lunges forward and wraps him into a slightly unsteady hug, winding her arms around his waist and accidentally bumping his chin with her forehead before nuzzling her face against the side of his neck. He grabs her shoulders in surprise to prevent her from falling, and doesn’t even think before hissing in her ear: “What are you doing with _Milton_?!”

“We’re talking,” she retorts in a ridiculous stage-whisper that makes him roll his eyes hard.

He tries to unwind her arms from around his waist, but she’s holding on too tight. Her lips are ghosting over the sensitive skin of his neck, and it’s hard to focus on anything, especially with how pressed up again him she is. But then he spots Milton looking at them, and jealousy flares up in his chest again.

Why is she talking with _Milton_? When she called him the most boring man alive once? She’s swaying in his arms a little, and he thinks she’s definitely drunk. Why did she drink so much? He’s never seen her in that state of drunkenness before. Was the whole night such a bust? Why is he so annoyed at all of this?

“He’s staring at your boobs”, he blurts out in an angry whisper, then thinks to himself, there’s his answer. He wouldn’t have thought he could get that jealous about something so stupid, but apparently he can. He really doesn’t know how to feel about this at all.

Somehow his assertion gets a loud giggle out of her though, which is definitely a surprise. She probably didn’t hear the obvious jealousy in his voice, he thinks. He doesn’t think it would make her laugh if she was sober.

She’s still holding him, and when he tries to get her to let go of him, softly pushing her shoulders away, it actually has the opposite effect. She unwinds her arms from around his waist to slide them back around him again, this time in between his cardigan and his shirt. He cannot help his indignant hiss at that, because her hands are absolutely freezing and he’s very acutely aware of that fact because of how thin his shirt is, but at the same he’s also extremely aware of how much she’s leaning against him, and how, if she wasn’t so drunk, she would hear how hard his heart is pounding.

“I think we should get you home”, he tells her with a sigh when he thinks he’s gotten a better hold on the entire situation and his voice won’t crack embarrassingly if he speaks.

Somehow, that’s when Milton decides to open his stupid mouth. “Hey man, d’you mind?” he whines in his very annoying voice, and Fitz has a very hard time not rolling his eyes all the way to the back of his head. “We were talking.”

“Fuck off Milton.”

Jemma’s loud giggle at that is actually very rewarding, and he cannot help his tiny smile because of it. He finally manages to get her to let go of him, securing one of her hands in his and softly tugging on her arm. “Come on,” he tells her, ignoring Milton’s indignant – but mostly shocked, he thinks – expression. “Let’s go home.”

He tugs her after him, focused on weaving through the crowd to reach the stairs. Jemma follows him without a word, and he’s very thankful for that, because he’s not entirely sure what he would’ve done if she’d insisted on sticking with Milton. That would have been the worst. At least now he can prevent her from doing anything stupid, like getting back with that asshat. God he hates that guy.

He’s very focused on getting out of the Boiler Room as fast as possible, and it’s only when he puts his foot on the first step of the stairs that he starts registering the whistles and comments following them.

“Hey, _finally_!”

“You kids have fun!”

“Don’t forget protection!”

A cadet even reaches forward and claps him on the back, and it’s like a storm of anger erupts in his chest all of a sudden. He doesn’t think he’s ever felt so angry and humiliated before in his life – and he’s lived with an abusive father for the first ten years of said life. Who do they think they are, commenting on something they can’t even begin to understand anyway?

Fucking _idiots_.

His cheeks are burning and he really wants to punch something at the moment, but he chooses to ignore them all and focuses on not holding too hard onto Jemma’s hand because he doesn’t want to hurt her. He leads her out of the Boiler Room, and she lets him, chuckling a little, and he’s hit with another wave of fresh anger because of it. Why did she have to drink so much? What happened to her? She always prides herself in being above all these things, why choose now to act different? Why isn’t she bothered by everyone’s comments? Gone as she seems though, maybe she didn’t even hear them, it wouldn’t that surprising.

He can’t even bring himself to be mad at her though. He thinks he’s mostly very, very disappointed with the way the night went, when he had such high hopes for it – and also extremely pissed at people for not being able to mind their own fucking business. Ugh, this is the worse night ever.

“Why did you drink so much?” he asks in a mumble, more to himself than to her because he doesn’t expect her to reply in any case.

She doesn’t, for a while. They’ve made it to the darkened, empty quad by the time she does. “Because I was sad.”

He almost jumps in surprise despite how faint and little her voice sounds, and turns back to her with a frown, not entirely sure he heard right. She’s not looking at him, but at her shoes, and she doesn’t look up even when he stops walking for a couple of seconds. She’s still holding onto his hand, with both of hers, but she won’t meet his eyes, and it’s killing him. She shrugs a little, and he thinks his heart breaks just a tiny bit. “Why were you sad?” he asks, very quietly, scared to see her clam up and not talk to him anymore.

She doesn’t say anything at first, shrugging again, and he makes a non-committal noise before lightly tugging on her arm again to resume walking. Maybe this is not a conversation they should have in the middle of the quad at night. Whatever it is that made her sad – he desperately hopes it’s not _him_ – she’ll tell him on her own terms. Prying right now when she’s still obviously under the influence would be mean and irresponsible anyway.

He’s surprised again though, because as they climb the outside steps leading to her dorm, she talks again, louder this time, and he definitely jumps, startled. “Do you like Ophelia?”

He glances at her, his heart beating hard in his chest all of a sudden. Their eyes meet for a split second before she purposefully looks down. As she starts to take her hand away, he makes a decision. He presses her fingers in his, holding onto her fingers, and shakes his head. “I don’t.”

“Oh.”

It’s a breathless, definitely relieved little ‘oh’, and it makes him smile. He doesn’t let her see it though, turning his back to her, and leads her up the stairs without another word. They reach her building, and he opens the front door, walking inside in silence. He’s still holding onto her hand, and he doesn’t intend to let go of it anytime soon.

“Do you like someone?”

Her words are shy, hesitant, and he feels his cheeks warm up because of the underlying hope in them. They’re in front of her door now, and he’s fumbling with the key he’s got on his own set of keys that she gave to him a year ago. He’s definitely stalling, but whatever. He risks a glance towards her, and his heart jumps in his chest when he realizes she’s looking at him now, with a little frown that makes her look unfairly cute. “I do.”

“Do I… know her? Or, or him?”

This gets a small chuckle out of him despite himself, and he shakes his head, finally getting her door open. How she doesn’t know _who_ he likes, he has no idea, but if he knows one thing, it’s that he doesn’t want to confess his feelings for her on her doorstep when she can barely stand on her own because she drank too much. “Let’s get you to bed Jemma,” he tells her quietly, and she pouts a little but follows him inside nonetheless.

He walks to her bedside table and turns the lamp on, deeming it better than the overhead lights. Then he reaches under her pillow where he knows she keeps her comfy jammies, and turns back to her. She’s still standing in the entrance of her room, precariously perched on one foot trying to take her shoes off, and he runs at her side, grabbing her elbow gently to steady her. “Here, maybe you should sit for that,” he offers, trying to hide his amused smile, but even drunk, nothing escapes Jemma Simmons, and she glares at him a little.

He guides her to the bed, and she drops on it with that cute little pout he loves so much on her face. He lets her take care of her shoes, setting her pajamas next to her, and goes to fill up a tall glass of water. He sets it up on her bedside table, then gently shoves the jammies in her arms when she’s done battling her shoe straps, nodding to the bathroom behind him. “I think you’d be more comfortable in pajamas.”

“Do I really have to change?” she asks, a little whiny, and he can’t help his chuckle because he doesn’t know if he’s ever heard her whine about anything ever.

“You really should,” he nods, offering his hands to help her up, and she reluctantly take them. She’s still a little unsteady on her feet, so he walks her to the bathroom door, chuckling softly when she leans almost entirely against him. “Come on Jemma, you can do this. Call if you need help okay?”

“Mkay,” she mumbles, and he closes the door behind her, trying hard not to laugh because he’s not sure if she would appreciate it. He’s never taken care of her like that. She’s never been sick, and she’s never been this drunk either, in the two years they’ve been friends.

_Friends_. Are things going to change between them? He’s still not entirely sure, but he’ll get time to figure things out when she feels better. He’s quite sure she was jealous earlier, and that telling her that he doesn’t like Ophelia kind of eased her mind a little. Maybe he really should ask her out. He thinks there’s a very good chance she might say yes.

After five good minutes, he hears a loud thud inside the bathroom, followed by a muffled curse, and he bites his lip not to chuckle again. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah yeah,” comes her slightly annoyed voice, and he allows himself to smile as brightly as he wants to, just because she can’t see it. When she opens the door he sobers up, but a little too late according to the frown on her face. “Don’t make fun of me,” she sighs, pushing past him and dropping her dress in the hamper.

“I’m not,” he chuckles, and she glares at him again, but there’s a small amused smile poorly hidden there too. “Off to bed now!”

“Do you have to be so chipper about it?” she wonders aloud, weaving her fingers through her hair that she took the time to undo while she was in the bathroom. She gives him a pointed look as she climbs on the bed, wiggling under the covers, and he cannot help his smirk.

“Damn, you’re awfully grumpy when you’re drunk, Simmons,” he teases, helping her settle comfortably, and she lets out a very heartfelt sigh that makes him chuckle once again. That’s what being with her does to him he guesses. Turns him into a giant sap.

He loves it.

“I’m not drunk,” she mumbles grumpily, glaring at him again, but there’s fondness in her eyes, and he thinks he could drown in them and be very happy about it, if only he could.

“Here, you need to drink a lot of water.”

“I know, I’m a biologist.”

“Alright, I’ll leave you in your own very capable hands then,” he smirks, and she rolls her eyes. But when he makes to move away, she grabs the edge of his cardigan and tugs on it, holding him back.

“Please stay?” she asks in a little voice, so unlike her usual assured and enthusiastic tone that his eyebrows shot up in surprise.

And then his cheeks heat up a little, because of what she’s asking him, and his brain starts overthinking everything like it always does, and that’s not good. “Oh I don’t think it’s–”

“Please, just this once?” she cuts him, sitting up, and her eyes are almost pleading, but also quite shy at the same time, and he thinks he’s never been this willing to give her anything she wants in his entire life, although he’s not quite ready to admit _that_ to her. “Then I promise I’ll never ask you again, please just… one last time?”

And that’s when his heart crumbles into pieces. First the way she asked if he liked anyone, and now this? How can’t she know how completely gone he is for her? He thought he was being the most obvious idiot with a crush of the entire galaxy, but apparently not if she thinks he won’t say yes again to sleep in her bed. God, what a mess. How can she not _know_?

She probably misinterprets his silence as hesitation, because she makes a face, looking away, and starts telling him to forget about it, and that she’ll obviously be okay if he goes. He cuts her by grabbing her hand on the bed, ducking his head to meet her eyes fully, and smiles softly. “Okay,” he simply says, and she lets out a tiny sigh of relief before smiling too.

She mouths a thanks, and he pretends to roll his eyes, dropping her hand to take his cardigan off and set it aside on her desk chair. He can feel her eyes following his every move, which is almost as nerve-wracking as the fact that he’s just agreed to sleep in Jemma Simmons’s bed while she’s drunk and despite remembering exactly what happened last time he did that. He takes his shoes off, purposefully busying himself with getting ready for bed to avoid thinking and/or meeting her eyes, because he’s not entirely sure what he’s going to see there.

He walks inside the bathroom to brush his teeth, spreading some toothpaste on his finger to do so, and he’s just wondering if she actually fell asleep when she talks again, her voice loud and teasing in the silent room.

“I promise I won’t get mad that you don’t have your pajamas.”

“Ha ha, very funny Simmons,” he calls back, exaggerating the annoyed tone of his voice on purpose, then smiles to himself in the mirror when he hears her giggle again. Somehow his brain tries to convince him that this particular moment would be perfect for three particular little words that he’s been thinking more and more when around her, and he makes a face, spitting in the sink and rinsing his mouth to prevent himself from blurting anything embarrassing.

It’s too soon. And she’s not in full possession of her usual faculties. _And_ they’re not even a real thing yet. There might be a chance of that changing soon – if he can work up the courage to just ask her out – but tonight is definitely not the night for any of those things to happen. It wouldn’t feel _right_.

There’s a more pressing matter anyway.

Whether or not he should keep his jeans on.

God, what has his life become?

After very careful deliberation, he ends up deciding that he should keep them on, despite the fact that he’s not going to be very comfortable sleeping like that. There’s just too many risks at hand if he takes them off, he thinks. Wouldn’t be worth it. Doesn’t think he’d be comfortable laying in Jemma’s bed in his underwear anyway.

After giving himself one last look in the mirror, he walks back into the room, meeting her eyes as he does. Not sleeping then. It would have been a little easier if she’d been asleep, he thinks, but oh well. Can’t have everything in life, can you? God, he’s about to sleep in Jemma’s bed again. She’s Jemma, not Simmons. She’s the girl he’s fallen in love with, and he’s the one she’s asked to sleep beside her tonight. And there might be an actual possibility that she likes him too.

_Shut up, brain._

He walks to his side of the bed, carefully selects a pillow, tossing the others aside, and slides under the covers. Not too close, not too far, he tells himself, but then it doesn’t matter anyway because he has to reach over her to turn off the bedside lamp. He keeps his eyes wide open as he settles back on his side of the bed, trying to ignore the pounding of his heart, and the way she’s ever so slightly moving closer to him.

The silence is deafening in his opinion, and despite his attempts he cannot relax one bit. He has no idea how much time passes before she speaks again.

“Keeping your jeans on?”

He nods, cheeks burning, then remembers she can’t see him and mumbles his assent. The loud silence comes back full force for a moment, but then…

“I promise I won’t get mad if you wake up with a morning erection either.”

“Simmons!” he squeaks, eyes bugging out in shock, “oh my… please, just–”

“Sorry,” she whispers, and he thinks she’s trying to hold back a chuckle, which is very offending in his opinion. He can’t believe she just said that. That’s, that’s, _Christ_. There’s another long silence, where he takes the opportunity to try and calm the pounding of his heart, and then there’s ruffling of sheets, and suddenly he feels her move closer, pressing her cheek to the side of his shoulder, and linking their fingers together. “Fitz?”

“Yeah?” he whispers back, hoping against all odds that she can’t hear the way his heart is pounding again.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

He feels her noticeably relax against him, and a few moments later her breathing evens out, signaling that she’s fallen asleep at last. She’s still holding his hand in between their two bodies, and he can feel the small puffs of her breath on his shoulder each time she exhales. He cannot bring himself to sleep for a long time though.

Because now he knows two things.

One, Jemma Simmons probably has feelings for him, feelings as in she wants them to be more than friends.

And two, for some weird, inconceivable reason, she thinks he doesn’t like her back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, but let's be fair to poor Jemma here, I think we can safely say that Fitz is the king of mixed signals right? I've been thinking about all this from her POV, and honestly, he can be very confusing imo LOL
> 
> One chapter left!!! So excited to write it!!! I've been dying to write it even before I started writing the first one xD
> 
> Also, you guys are the best, I'm so glad you're enjoying reading this story as much as I enjoy writing it!! ♥


	7. Trial and Error

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Speaking about being an idiot, if she did do that on purpose, maybe she thought something would happen between them on Tuesday night too, when she asked him if he wanted to stay. Maybe she wanted to taste his lips too, that night.  
> Such a fucking idiot.  
> No more experiments. He’s getting his head out of his ass and asking her out today.  
> If she’s changed her mind, then that’s on him. He’d probably deserve it, honestly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I did it!!!  
> I'm so excited for you guys to read this!!!!  
> A lot happens in this, get ready for 8,698 of FitzSimmons Academy babies YAY  
> I procrastinated my proofreading a lot because I think I don't want this fic to end but... I still did it!  
> Enjoy ♥

**The Scientific Method**

**Chapter 7: Trial and error**

Fitz doesn’t get much sleep that night. It’s one of those nights where you think you don’t sleep at all but still probably do, even if it’s just a little bit. He figures he probably slept even if he feels exhausted, because when he opens his eyes, startled awake without knowing why, Jemma and him are not in the same position that he remembers being in.

He’s laying on his side, and she’s mirroring his position. They’re facing each other, his knees touching hers under the covers. She had let go of his hand at some point during the night, but their fingers are still brushing against each other on the mattress. She’s close, her head slightly lower than his on the pillow, and if he wanted he could lean forward just a bit and kiss her forehead.

He’s very tempted to, but he doesn’t.

This is definitely less terrifying than the last time he woke up in her bed though. The thought brings a tiny smile to his lips, despite his stiff neck and his eyes burning from exhaustion. It’s still early it seems, from the pale light filtering through the curtains they forgot to close properly last night, but now that he’s awake his brain doesn’t seem keen on getting back to sleep anytime soon.

He’s not as uncomfortable as he thought he would be sleeping in his jeans, but as his brain regains consciousness the previous night’s events start playing back in his mind. As a result, he’s growing more and more restless, almost desperate to toss and turn to try and make sense of everything. But Jemma is still deeply asleep next to him, and he doesn’t want to wake her up, especially when she probably needs to rest a lot to cure the probable hangover she’s gonna sport today.

Knowing perfectly that there’s no way he’s getting back to sleep now, he chooses to slip out of bed and get back to his room to figure things out. He leaves her a note, next to the refilled glass of water on her bedside table, so that she won’t worry when she wakes up. He’s extremely glad not to encounter anyone on his way back to his room. As soon as he’s made it back, he collapses on his bed and lets out a long breath, exhausted but very much overthinking at the same time.

Last night was a _lot_ , to say the least.

He’s pretty sure now that Jemma likes him. Which should be a very good thing. He’s been trying to figure out if she did for a week, and now he has his answer. He should be ecstatic to know that she does, because even if she didn’t specifically say the words, it was still kind of obvious from all the clues he gathered yesterday.

And yet.

It somehow feels bittersweet, and he’s not entirely sure why. Maybe because it doesn’t exactly feel real, despite him being pretty sure that it’s true. Or maybe it’s because she thinks he doesn’t like her back. He’s still unsure _how_ she can think that. She’s the most wonderful person he’s ever met, how could he not fall in love with her? How could he stay indifferent to her? Doesn’t she realize how incredible she is? How he just couldn’t help falling for her, how he tried because he thought it wasn’t right since she was his best friend first, and how he completely failed?

She was sad. She drank too much because she was sad, and when he asked her why, she asked him if he liked Ophelia. She was sad because of him, because she saw him talking with Ophelia instead of her and thought he liked the older girl better than his best friend in the world. It’s not true, _at all_ , but it doesn’t matter because it’s still his fault. He should have told Ophelia to bugger off sooner. He should have spent his entire night with Jemma. He should have stuck with her as she talked with the other cadets, should have slipped into that conversation about dissection, should have insisted on staying with her throughout the night.

He’s not entirely sure why he didn’t do just that.

He had such high hopes for last night, and nothing happened as planned. When do things ever do, anyway? He should have kissed her last Sunday, when they were studying outside. He should have stopped her before she ran away after kissing his cheek Thursday night, and kissed her properly. Or on Wednesday, when she told him that her presentation went well, or on Tuesday, when she asked him to stay for the night.

Oh God.

She asked him to stay for the night, and he said no. She kissed him on the cheek, and then he acted super weird the next day because he was embarrassed. She’s been trying to spend more and more time with him, leaning closer, acting different, and he’s been almost keeping her at bay because he was too busy trying to figure out if she liked him using science instead of his fucking common sense like the huge asocial moron he is.

Ugh, no wonder she thinks he doesn’t like her back.

Honestly, he thinks he doesn’t deserve her to like him. He’s too much of a fucking idiot for that.

Ugh, but maybe that’s the problem. Maybe he was so sure she just couldn’t possibly like him that every little sign he saw just didn’t seem like enough evidence. Yeah, that’s probably exactly it. He was too busy being the self-deprecating ass he always is to face the truth. Ugh, and he’s apparently not stopping.

Shaking his head, he stands up from the bed and decides on a shower to try and get out of his head a little. It obviously doesn’t work at all. When he gets out, he gets dressed in a shirt and comfy pants, thinking to himself he’ll try and work on some things for his classes, but that’s obviously not an option. He keeps checking his phone, half hoping Jemma will text him as soon as she wakes up, even though it’s still fairly early and she’s probably still sleeping.

He notices the blinking light indicating that his battery is low, so he opens his drawer to find his charger, and his eyes fall on his experiment notebook. He puts his phone on charge, then grabs the notebook, flipping through it. He’s surprised by the anger he feels rising in him as he does. Why can’t he be more straightforward? Why couldn’t he just _ask_ her? He should have stayed that Friday morning, and talked things through with her.

He can still feel her moving against him. It’s been 8 days, and it’s still perfectly imprinted in his mind. Maybe it was on purpose. Maybe she ground her bum against him when she felt him hard, maybe she thought something could happen right then. Oh God, he’s such an idiot. Speaking about being an idiot, if she did do that on purpose, maybe she thought something would happen between them on Tuesday night too, when she asked him if he wanted to stay. Maybe she wanted to taste his lips too, that night.

Such a fucking idiot.

No more experiments. He’s getting his head out of his ass and asking her out today.

If she’s changed her mind, then that’s on him. He’d probably deserve it, honestly.

In a fit of anger, he dumps the notebook in the trashcan next to his dresser, and lets out a disgruntled groan as he falls back down on the bed once again…

Only to stand back up real fast when there’s a soft knock on his door a second after.

His heart is suddenly pounding, and he _obviously_ gets a head rush because he’s an idiot, but it doesn’t matter because then he hears _her_ voice behind the door asking if he’s there. He stumbles to the door and opens it, hoping his burning cheeks aren’t as red as they feel. There she is, standing in the doorway, looking a little shy and a lot beautiful, and he forgets his words for a moment.

“Hi Fitz,” she says after a few seconds, probably since he’s not saying anything, and he shakes his head to try and come back to his senses and stop acting like a fucking moron.

“Jem– Simmons, hey,” he stammers, then mentally slaps himself when her face falls a little. He’s ruining everything. Oh God this is terrifying. He didn’t get enough time, he’s not prepared! He can’t improvise on the spot and ask her out just like that, that’s not him!

“Can I come in?” she asks, her voice hesitant, and he nods instantly.

“Yes, right.”

He turns around, walking back inside his room, leaving her to close the door behind her. He takes a quick breath before turning back to her, and when he does, he’s transported back to a kind of similar moment a little over two years ago, to that very first time she came to his room to help him with a problem, back during their first year. She’d been late, 24 minutes late to be precise, he still remembers it perfectly, and he had thought she’d stood him up – when in fact she’d just run into Weaver in the quad and got trapped in a good conversation. When she’d finally arrived, he was a stammering mess, so excruciatingly uncomfortable that he kept saying rude things despite himself.

Things had changed that night, although he’s still not sure how or why, and it had been the start of the most amazing friendship he’s ever had. He still thinks he’s extremely lucky she looked past his social ineptitude and became friends with him.

And now maybe more?

Oh God.

She’s looking at him, wringing her hands, and he can feel her nervousness even from where he stands near the foot of the bed. He wants to move closer, but he’s so scared to ruin things he can’t bring himself to move. She bites her lip, looking down at her feet for a second, and then back up, drawing in a breath as if to steady her nerves, and he inhales sharply as well, his heart pounding almost painfully in his chest.

“Fitz I–” she starts, then cuts herself, rolling her hands in two fits at her side, “I’m, I just, I came here to apologize for last night, I–”

And _oh_.

_Oh no_.

He’s read the signs wrong. She doesn’t like him, she was just drunk, she doesn’t want things to change, she–

“–I don’t know what’s gotten into me, I never meant to make you uncomfortable in any way–”

Her eyes are shiny, and he thinks maybe she’s close to tears, or maybe he’s totally wrong and _he_ ’s the one close to tears, he has no fucking idea and it’s killing him.

“I’m really sorry and I promise it won’t happen again,” she trails off, avoiding his eyes, and the dread flooding his veins is almost powerful enough to make him break right on the spot.

“Oh that’s–” he stammers out, voice cracking, “I mean I’m– that’s– okay.”

She looks up, and their eyes meet, and for a moment they stare at each other, the silence surrounding them heavy and deafening. Then she looks away, and he thinks her lower lip is trembling a little, and it’s breaking his heart all over again, but what can he do? He wants to walk to her and hold her in his arms, but she’s made it clear that last night was a mistake, so it’s probably not the right thing to do.

He hates to see her so conflicted all the same. It doesn’t matter in the end of she doesn’t want him the way he wants her, the only thing that matters to him is for her to be happy.

He’s taking a shy step towards her, not entirely sure what he wants to do, but then she speaks again, with a self-deprecating chuckle that really is nothing Jemma-like. “Sorry I ruined your night I– hey, why are you throwing away this notebook, it looks perfectly fine!”

She reaches towards the trashcan, and a small part of himself thinks she’s just looking for something to say to change the subject and make things less awkward between them after her apology.

And then his heart, and his brain, and everything that’s him, just _stops working_ when he registers her words.

She grabs the notebook, and he thinks he’s about to puke.

Not this, she can’t see this, she can’t–

“Fitz what is this?”

_Oh no, oh no no no no no…_

She’s frowning, staring at the open notebook, and if he could remember how to move, he would snatch it out of her hands before she could read anything, but he’s frozen. Frozen in fear, in embarrassment, he can’t think, he can’t move, can’t even–

“Fitz, is that… what…” her voice is breathless, and when she looks up to meet his eyes, he thinks he spots some deep surprise in her hazel eyes, mixed with anger and… awe? “Are those… experiments? Who’s the… the… subject?”

Somehow this question brings him back to life, and he takes a stumbling step towards her. “Oh that’s, that’s nothing I–”

“There’s my name here.”

This, paired with the piercing look she gives him, effectively shuts him up. She goes back to flipping through the pages, and he can’t even find it in himself to be mad, because honestly he had it coming. He could be angry at her for invading his privacy or whatever, but then again, he thinks he’d want to read a notebook if it had his name in it too. Oh God there’s so many things in there he doesn’t want her to see. “Jemma I’m sorry I–”

“Honestly I want to be mad,” she cuts him again, and he snaps his mouth shut, cheeks burning. “But at the same time I… I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so organized in writing before Fitz, I mean… this is… very thorough.”

“Um, thanks?”

She looks up again, her gaze so sharp he instantly regrets even opening his mouth. He thinks he makes a small, ridiculous noise, and she narrows her eyes at him before going back to reading, and he wants to collapse on his bed and hide under the covers. That would be ridiculous though, and he thinks he’s already made enough of a fool out of himself today. She came here to apologize, and now it’s definitely his turn. Ugh, how dumb did he have to be to dump the stupid thing in the open like that?

He’s the worst.

The absolute worst.

“Jemma I–”

“So what’s your take on all of this?” she cuts him once again, closing the notebook with a sharp snap that makes him jump. She raises an inquisitive eyebrow at him and he gulps, looking for his words, but she doesn’t let him the time to even open his mouth. “Did you reach a conclusion?”

Her cheeks are a little flushed as she stares at him, and he’s not sure if it’s born from anger or something else. She’s awfully composed, her stern face not letting him guess what she’s thinking or feeling in the slightest, and a little part of him is definitely impressed because he has no idea how she does it.

He thinks he’d be a sputtering angry mess if roles were reversed.

_Did you reach a conclusion?_

He thought he did. Until she showed up this morning to apologize about last night, and now he knows nothing. He’s so confused, so scared of ruining everything between them, that he blurts out his answer without even thinking about it.

“Um, no. The results were uh, inconclusive.”

She scoffs, and he didn’t think it possible but he’s pretty sure he blushes even harder under her gaze. It’s like his entire face is burning, and his heart has been pounding in his chest for so long that it’s leaving him even more physically exhausted than before. It’s nothing compared to the maelstrom of emotions coursing through him though. He’s so terrified he can barely breathe. He even finds himself hoping this is just a nightmare and he’s about to wake up in Jemma’s bed again. Or maybe the entire previous week is just a dream, he’s just nodded off while studying for their holographic engineering test.

He snaps out of his very wishful thinking when she sets the notebook down on the dresser behind her, then takes a small step closer to him. She’s assessing him, her gaze firm and impenetrable, and a shiver runs up his spine all of a sudden. He cannot take his eyes off her, acutely aware of everything that’s her in this very moment. He still has no idea what she thinks, or if she even wants to be friends with him anymore, but somehow all of that drops to the background in that moment, only leaving her, and him, standing there looking at each other in the middle of his bedroom.

He wants to say something, wants to apologize, wants to beg for her to forgive him, but he can’t say a thing, not when she’s looking at him like that. He doesn’t even know what _that_ is. She’s closer now, he could grab her hand right now if he had the guts. He doesn’t.

She bites her lip, and he forces his eyes not to drop down to look. He’s not entirely sure he managed that, but then it doesn’t matter anymore, because she takes another step forward, and now she’s very, very close, and he can’t breathe. Her jaw is set, her eyes focused, and he thinks he’s never wanted to kiss her more badly than he does at that very moment.

“How about you consider this independent variable?” she asks, and for a split second he’s confused.

And then she’s kissing him.

Right on the lips. Her hand on his chest, and _her_ _lips_ on _his lips._

Soft and warm, light and shy, new and yet familiar, like his lips were always _meant_ to touch hers that way. In any case, he’s pretty sure his brain and his heart both explode at the contact.

It only lasts a second, he thinks. Then she moves back, and he realizes he’s closed his eyes so he blinks them open to meet her hazel eyes, feeling deliciously lightheaded.

“ _Oh_.”

“So?” she chuckles, and he’s very pleased to hear the slight breathlessness in her voice. Jemma Simmons just _kissed him_. “What do you think?”

What does he think? He wants to tell her the truth, which is, absolutely _nothing_ , because his mind is delightfully blank at the moment – a first, really – but then he thinks better of it. He knows what he’s thinking. He knows what he wants.

_More_.

“Let me just–” he starts, and then _he_ ’s kissing _her_ , and she makes a small surprised noise before smiling against his lips, and his heart soars so high he’s pretty sure it just flies right out of his chest. They break apart after a few seconds, and she gives him an amused, questioning look that makes him want to kiss her all over again and never ever stop, but then he also thinks he needs to explain his reasoning because he’s pretty sure she’s going to like it. “I mean, you know how things work,” he says with a very falsely casual shrug that makes her grin, “I think– well, I _know_ I need a– a large sample size to be able to, you know, draw sensible conclusion.”

“Right,” she nods, her smile turning a little mischievous, and a delighted shiver runs through him. “That makes sense. How about this?”

And then she’s stepping even closer, moving her hands up to thread her fingers through his hair, stands on her tiptoes and kisses him hard, stealing his breath away. Her insanely soft lips slightly part and then he feels the tip of her tongue tracing his lower lip, and he can’t help himself and gasps against her mouth. It makes her chuckle and she leans back, laughing when he tries to follow, desperate for more contact. He realizes his hands flew to her waist of their own volition while they were kissing, but she’s not complaining, so he’s definitely not complaining either.

“So?” she asks again, her smile turning as bright as the sun when he pouts a little in response. She bumps his nose with hers, and he wonders if one can die of too much happiness.

Oops, there he is again, the giant sap she turns him into. Once again, can’t complain.

He pretends to think for a second, delighted to hear her chuckle. Making her laugh is definitely one of his favorite thing in the whole world – alongside science, monkeys, and also _kissing her_. Right now, he definitely thinks more kissing is in order. “I think I really need more data to–”

She cuts him with another searing kiss, and he thinks excitedly that this is definitely the best way he’s ever been shut up in his entire life. He even makes a mental note to tell her that she can feel free to shut him up like that anytime she wants, really. And then he absolutely melts against her as they kiss, wrapping his arms around her to keep her close because honestly, he really just wants to do this for the rest of his life now.

Maybe he’d miss food and science after a while, but really he thinks that’d be worth it.

She does the thing with her tongue again, and then he decides to try it and she moans against his lips, which is probably the most beautiful sound he’s ever heard in his entire life. But then they do it at the same time, and before he can fully register what’s happening their tongues are dancing around each other and his heart explodes in his chest again. When they break apart after a little while, he barely moves back, leaning his forehead against hers as he draws in a shuddering breath, before spotting her smug little grin. In normal circumstances, it would make him roll his eyes, but he’s so busy being over the fucking _moon_ from the direction things are taking that he just pouts a little instead.

Her smirk turns fond, and she pecks his lips lightly. “You’re so dumb for a genius.”

“Hey!” he scoffs indignantly, moving back to meet her eyes, but she chases his lips and gives him another kiss, this time trapping his lower lip between hers, effectively wiping his brain off entirely. He blinks a little dumbly when she leans back, and she drops her hands to his chest, over his pounding heart. He thinks she can probably feel how fast it’s beating, and maybe he could feel a little embarrassed about it, but he actually doesn’t at all.

He thinks he’s glad she can feel what she’s doing to him – to his heart, and then to other regions of himself as well.

“You know you could have just asked?” she teases, looking very satisfied with herself, and this time he does roll his eyes.

“Ugh, I’m disappointed in you Simmons,” he pretends to sigh, shaking his head, “if you think I could have just _asked_ then you clearly don’t know me at all.” Seeing that she’s opening her mouth to probably argue about that, he somehow manages to get a little bolder and bumps her nose softly with his, smiling smugly. “But who cares really, it still worked, didn’t it?”

She shoves him a little in response, rolling her eyes, but then she’s kissing him again and honestly he doesn’t think it can get much better than this. They kiss for a while, for seconds or maybe hours, he’s not entirely sure. It makes sense, he thinks, time is after all relative. He’s never been more aware of that fact now that he’s so very busy _snogging_ Jemma Simmons.

Best day ever.

Somehow this thought brings him back to last Sunday, because that was one very good day as well, and a small question crosses his mind, distracting him a little from the wonderful things he’s feeling thanks to her lips pressed against his. He leans back after a few more seconds, breaking the kiss, and his heart jumps high in his chest when she pouts a little, her eyes still closed. “Can I ask you something?” he ventures, a little breathless, and a small grin graces her lips before she moves her mouth to the side of his neck, making shivers run up and down his entire body.

“Mhm?”

Oh God, what was it that he wanted to ask her again? He lets out a moan and feels her smile against his skin, and yeah his brain is definitely completely _gone_. He’s crunching the soft fabric of her blouse in his fists, trying to remember how to even breathe because honestly _wow_. It takes him a minute, but then he manages to get the words out of his mouth despite Simmons’s very obvious attempt to distract him. “On, on Sunday, were you, _ah_ , were you about to kiss me?”

She moves back at his words, with a smug little smile, but her cheeks are flushed and her eyes bright, and he thinks she’s never looked so beautiful. “I think I was yes,” she nods, and she sounds a little sheepish, which is kind of surprising given what she was just doing – driving him mad with open mouth kisses all over his neck.

“Then I opened my big mouth,” he laments himself a little, and she chuckles, wrapping her arms around his waist when he pretends to move away.

“Honestly I kind of hoped you would say something last Friday when, you know,” she trails off, meeting his eyes with her mischievous ones, and he feels himself blush hard.

“Bloody hell don’t remind me,” he whines, letting his head drop to her shoulder, and she chuckles again, “that was fucking embarrassing.”

He feels her shrug, but he doesn’t move just yet, because damn she smells _so good_ he can’t get enough of her. “Nothing to be embarrassed about really,” she tells him kindly, running her fingers lightly at the nape of his neck, and goosebumps raise all over his skin. “I mean I…” she trails off again, her hand falling back to his chest, and then his hip. “I liked what I felt,” she whispers in his ear, and before he knows what’s happening she’s tugging at one of his belt loops, flushing their hips together, and he lets out a very manly squeak.

“Jemma!” He’s so shell-shocked that he leans back, cheeks very hot when he meets her playful gaze. He can’t believe she just said that. He can’t believe she just… there’s no way she’s not feeling how completely turned on he is right now, and she’s willingly, she’s, ah, this is too much, no thoughts, _brain empty_. “Can’t believe you just said that,” he hears himself say, but the only response she gives him is another smug little smirk that makes his heart jump in his chest.

Then she lightly pushes his chest with both hands, and he reluctantly lets go of her waist, not entirely sure what she’s doing. He takes a step back when she pushes again, and then another, and then the back of his knees hurt something soft and his brain runs wild with possibilities when she lightly shoves him again, making him sit down on the edge of the bed. He looks up, keeping his eyes fixed in hers, completely dazed. A little part of him is very thankful he chose trousers instead of jeans earlier, because he would have been extremely uncomfortable by then. The rest of him is staring in adoration at the wonder that is Jemma Simmons.

She gives him a soft smile, moving in between his legs, and he desperately wants to kiss her again, but her eyes are searching his face for something it seems, so he stays still, staring up at her and hoping she finds whatever it is that she wants to find written in his eyes. She softly cups his cheek, and he leans into her touch, thinking to himself if he could purr like a cat he definitely would right now. He also thinks he really, really wants to touch her, maybe slide his hands back and cup her very nice bum, or even better, since he’s kind of face to face with her boobs right now, he’s definitely sure he can figure out something very nice to do about _that._ He’s not entirely sure if she would be okay with that though, so he figures maybe he can just ask. “Can I–”

“I really like you Fitz,” she blurts out at the same time, and he gapes at her and her rosy cheeks for a moment, amazed.

“I– I really like you too,” he eventually hears himself stammer, and the relief on her face is obvious, so before he can stop himself he adds, “Jemma.”

The solar smile she gives him at that is probably the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen in his life, he thinks. “I like it when you call me Jemma,” she tells him a little shyly, and he grins back, his heart doing a happy little jump once again.

“I like it too.”

“I think we,” she cuts herself, wetting her lips – which is very distracting, although she doesn’t quite seem to notice how _much_ – then shakes her head and gives him another smile. “You’re my best friend in the world, and obviously that matters but I thought, I mean, maybe we could–”

“Be girlfriend and boyfriend?” he supplies helpfully, and is delighted to see the pretty blush on her cheeks at that. She really is the most perfect human being he’s ever gotten the chance to meet.

“Yeah?” her smile is so shy and hopeful it effectively takes his breath away.

God he’s so in love with her.

“I’d like that,” he nods once, and she bites down her smile, leaning forward, and then they’re kissing again, and the angle is different now that he’s sitting and she’s standing, but he absolutely adores it just as much, if not more. He can’t believe he’s kissing Jemma Simmons. _Kissing_ her, for real. He moves his hands to her hips, and she cups his cheeks with both of hers, treading the tips of her fingers through his hair, and he moans against her lips. His reaction seems to embolden her because she moves even closer, and then she’s flushed against him and he wraps his arms around her, keeping her there for good.

He definitely does not intend to let go of her anytime soon.

He’s pretty sure he’s in heaven right now.

She bites his lower lip lightly then soothes it with her tongue, and he’s almost heady with desire at this point. His brain somehow switches to auto-pilot after that, which he thinks is extremely cool because he obviously has no idea what he’s doing at the moment. According to the delicious little sounds she’s making, she definitely likes it as well. He unwinds one of his arms from around her waist, letting his hand slide against the perfect curve of her bum, smiling against her lips when he feels the shiver running through her. Her blouse has ridden up a little, and he lets his thumb run under it, along her incredibly smooth skin, and she gasps, her fingers tensing in his hair.

He’s painfully hard now, has been for a while – pretty much since the very first time she kissed him, if he’s honest with himself – and it seems as if things are progressing real fast all of a sudden, especially when she rolls her hips against his chest a little, making him gasp against her lips yet again.

That’s when he gets a little dizzy with all the possibilities, and he breaks the kiss and scoots back a little, enough to meet her eyes, because there’s so many things he wants to ask her right now. Her lips are kiss-swollen and her pupils are dilated, and his heart almost aches at how beautiful she is. Somehow, it becomes extremely important to ask her one thing in particular.

“So um,” he starts, gulping under her surprised and questioning eyes, “how about, I mean, would you like to,” –why is this so hard to say this when they were just sucking faces seconds ago?– “would you like to go on a date with me?”

There’s a shift in her eyes that he can’t quite explain, and then she leans down to kiss him lightly again, smiling against his lips. “I’d love to,” she tells him in a soft whisper, her breath tickling his lips, and he smiles too, heart jumping in his chest.

It’s official. Best day ever.

“Right now though,” she adds before he can say anything, her grin turning a little mischievous again, “I think I’d really like to continue _this_ a little, if that’s okay with you?”

He gapes at her as she raises a definitely suggestive eyebrow, and then before he can even properly process what’s happening, she’s putting both of her hands on his shoulders and _straddling_ him, and his brain entirely shuts off at that. He knows she knows what she’s doing to him right now, from the little glint of mirth in her eyes and the smug grin on her lips, but he can’t bring himself to care because then she’s kissing him again, hot and messy, pressing herself against his hard-on, and really that’s just, _fuck_.

She chuckles against his mouth, and he realizes he probably said that out loud. “Should I take that as a yes?” she asks teasingly, and he groans, chasing her lips, which makes her chuckle again. “Fitz?”

“Yes, very much yes,” he mumbles, muffling her amused laugh with another kiss, and then thinking to himself this is definitely a very good way to shut her up too. Maybe they could come up with a system of some sorts, where they’re both allowed to shut the other up like _that_ during an argument, in specific conditions of course. Oh God, how is he supposed to get anything done now that he knows what it feels like to kiss her?

The question completely eludes him when she starts _grinding_ against him, and then his brain is completely free of any verbalized thought for quite some time after that. He’s lost in haze of hot lips and wandering hands, sensations he’s never felt before and feelings threatening to make his heart burst.

That is, until her cold fingers skim across the skin of his neck, then start working on his shirt, one button, then another one, and suddenly he’s breaking the kiss again, heart pounding _hard_. He’s not entirely sure why, but fear is gripping his brain and he moves back a little, fighting himself not to reflexively shoo her hands away from his shirt. “Wait, wh– what–”

Her eyes widen and she lets her hands fall, looking surprised and apologetic and maybe a little worried, too. “I’m sorry,” she stammers shyly, “am I going too fast? We can stop if you want, I didn’t mean to–”

“No!” he squeaks, and she almost jumps in surprise, which instantly makes him feel bad, “I mean, I’m okay, it’s just, I’m just, I–” he has no idea what this is, why he freaked out so much over her trying to take his shirt off – honestly, it makes sense for her to want that, seeing the way things are progressing, right? – but she’s staring at him, definitely worried now, and he needs to find an explanation _fast_. The good thing is, he has a tendency to ramble in stressful situations, and this time his ramble actually gives the explanation for itself without him really thinking it beforehand. “It’s just, I’m not, I mean, obviously I– I love this, but I’m not, I’m just not like, ugh, I’m a lot less, I mean, compared to all your other uh–”

“ _Oh_ Fitz.”

The tone of her voice tells him she _gets_ what he’s trying to say, but he’s too embarrassed to look her in the eye now. He’s not entirely sure why his insecurities about his body came back rushing _now_ , and he thinks it absolutely _sucks_ because now he’s ruined the mood. He’s nothing like the other guys she’s dated. They were all the definition of tall, dark and handsome, while he’s… well, definitely not that at all. He’s skinny and pasty and honestly not that good looking either, and _fuck_ what is she seeing in him anyway?

“Fitz. Fitz, look at me.”

Her voice is soft, but stern, and his heart skips a beat when he looks up to meet her eyes again. He’s surprised by the determined look on her face. He has no idea what to _say_ , because yes he’s nothing like the other guys she’s dated, but he’s also the one she’s _straddling_ right not, the one she’s been kissing senseless for the last half-hour, and he’s probably being an absolute idiot once again, isn’t he?

There’s a shift in her eyes, and he thinks she knows he’s come back to his senses and realized how dumb he was being, and maybe _that_ ’s what people mean when they tell them they’re psychically linked. She gives him a small, tentative smile, and he smiles back a sheepish thing, shrugging a little in an apologetic gesture. She pretends to roll her eyes good-naturedly, and he wants to kiss her again, but before he can, she grabs the hem of _her_ shirt and takes it off in one swift move.

And _fuck_ , he’s definitely in heaven right now.

“I want this,” she tells him seriously, waggling her finger between them. “I want _you_.”

All he can do is kiss her hungrily after that.

They work together on unbuttoning his shirt, with her going down and him going up, and then she helps him shrug it off before pressing herself against him, bare skin against bare skin, and they both moan at the wonderful feeling. She encourages him to cup one of her breasts through her cotton bra, and he’s very happy to comply. He drops a trail of kisses to her jaw and then down her neck as he does, and the little sighs and moans she makes because of it are music to his ears. Then she starts to grind against him again, and it becomes really hard to focus on making her feel good because _fuck_ it feels amazing.

He’s lost gain. Lost in her kisses and her hands roaming his chest in feather like touches, lost in the movements of her hips against his, lost in her moans and breathless sighs, in the heat building between them and the deep, coiling sensation rising in his guts.

It’s a familiar sensation obviously, he knows it well, has experienced it multiple times on his own, but it’s also extremely different at the same time, and he’s caught completely off guard when Jemma’s hips start rolling harder against him and suddenly he’s right _there_ , ready to tip over the edge, and he gasps in her mouth, dropping his hands to her hips to stop her movements.

“ _Fuck_.” He’s breathless, his head swimming and his heart pounding, as he desperately tries to calm down. She’s so close to him still, so hot and beautiful and _fuck_ he needs to put some distance between them if he doesn’t want to fucking embarrass himself again. He leans down on his back, letting go of her hips to press his palms hard to his eyelids to try and regain some control. He forces himself through deep breaths, fingers trembling, and he thinks he’s done it but then she moves her hips just a little, which sends a zing of pleasure through his entire body, and he hisses, terrified to just come right here and there like the fucking idiot he is.

“Fitz I’m sorry I–”

She sounds very worried, and this very easily brings him back down to Earth. “Oh no no no, it’s okay I–”he stammers and lets his hands fall back to her thighs, giving her a very apologetic smile. She’s looking at him with obvious concern in her hazel eyes, and he knows she thinks that she did something bad, something that maybe he didn’t like, or maybe that he’s reconsidering the whole thing – how crazy would he be to do _that_ , honestly – so he runs his thumbs against her thighs in what he hopes is a soothing gesture, shaking his head a little. “It’s just, I’m trying so hard not to, not too…” – how can the words be so difficult to _say_ , they’re just _words_ – “not to… _come_ all over myself right now, and, and, well, you’re making it very… hard.”

He’s pretty sure his cheeks are on fire right now, but he thinks it’s worth the adorable smile she gives him in response, paired with her breathless giggle _and_ her very own slightly pink cheeks. She carefully moves off him – he instantly misses her warmth – and lies down next to him, running her fingers across his cheek in an incredibly soft gesture that completely steals his heart. They stare at each other for a little while, catching their breaths, and then she chuckles again, and he raises a questioning eyebrow, curious to know what thought made her laugh.

Her grin instantly turns mischievous, and she tries to bite it down but fails. “Pun intended?” she asks, and he rolls his eyes _hard_ with a loud sigh that makes her laugh again. She pokes him in the side, then moves his arm up so she can snuggle against him and he instantly stops pretending he’s annoyed. “I’m sorry, we can slow down if you want,” she tells him quietly, and he thinks his heart melt a little at the fondness he can hear in her voice.

“It’s just… I mean, I’m just not as uh, as _experienced_ as you, I guess,” he replies sheepishly with a tiny shrug, and he’s kind of glad she’s not looking at him right now because he’s still feeling a little embarrassed despite her being her absolute perfect and understanding self as always.

“I know, I’m sorry,” she whispers, snuggling even closer. “This is all just… very exciting,” she adds with a chuckle, and he grins widely at the ceiling, tightening his arm around her and hoping she understands from the pounding of his heart under her ear that he definitely feels the same way. She drops a small kiss to his chest, just above his nipple, and his skin instantly covers in goosebumps, which she obviously notices. She leans up on her elbow to meet his eyes, biting her lip for a second with a thoughtful look, before shaking her head a little. “I’ll behave, I promise,” she tells him, and he thinks she’s trying to convince herself more than him, which is very cute and also unbearably sexy and makes him want to roll over her and kiss her senseless.

And then something bursts through his chest, something warm and comfortable and all-consuming, almost catching him by surprise, and he barely holds himself back from blurting out the three little words. It’s probably too soon. They’ve barely agreed to start dating. He can’t just _say_ it like that. He has to wait, has to find the perfect moment to do it. He definitely doesn’t want to pressure her into saying it back either. He really wants to tell her how much she means to him though. Maybe he can find another way to express that without using these specific words…

“Jemma… you know you’re my best friend and I, well, it means a lot to me that–”

“I love you too, Fitz.”

_Huh_.

Well then.

She’s looking at him with fond, caring eyes, still propped on her elbow, and he gapes at her for a minute, wondering stupidly if all of this is just a dream. He can’t believe she said it. She _said_ it. She loves him. She _loves_ him. Jemma Simmons loves Leo Fitz. How can this be real life?

He’s so completely lost in his awed happiness that he doesn’t instantly say it back, and he mentally beats himself up for it when her gaze turns a little unsure and she starts rambling. “I mean, I think we can say it right? We’ve been best friends for two years, and I’m pretty sure that that’s what I’m feeling right now, but obviously you don’t have to say it back if you don’t–”

“God no!” he squeaks, leaning up and grabbing her hand that’d been resting on his stomach, “I mean, yes! Of course, I’m sorry, I mean, I just didn’t want to pressure you into anything, or, or, I don’t know, move too fast–”

“Too fast?” she retorts, chuckling, and yeah, maybe she does have a point, it did take them two entire years to figure out that they were into each other after all.

Bringing her hand to his lips, he drops a soft kiss to her knuckles, eyes fixed in her familiar brown eyes. “I love you Jemma, so much.”

She lets out a delighted chuckle, and then they’re kissing again, soft and slow and sweet, and his heart jumps in his chest for the thousandth time that day. He can’t believe he’s lucky enough that she loves him. He can’t believe he’s lucky enough that _this_ will probably become his every day life. He can’t imagine ever getting used to kissing Jemma Simmons. He’s _kissing_ Jemma Simmons. She’s lying on his bed without a shirt on, _kissing him_. It doesn’t get much better than this, he’s pretty sure of _that_.

She’s obviously trying to keep things slow, but after a couple of minutes it kind of becomes obvious that things are _not_ kept slow at all. He’s not entirely sure who’s fault it is, really. The only thing he knows is that her boobs are smooched against his side and that it’s very distracting. Also, his hand moved down to cup her bum again, and her lips are moving sinfully against his, and her tongue is battling his tongue, and yeah that’s not taking things slow at all but he can’t bring himself to feel bad about that in the slightest.

He sets his other hand on her waist, marveling at how soft her skin is, then slowly moves it up until his thumb is edging under the band of her bra, and she shivers and gasps against his lips. He cannot help his grin at her reaction, but then she’s pushing him a little, breaking the kiss off, and he opens his eyes in surprise. She’s staring at him with a slightly accusing look, but he knows she’s not that mad because she’s grinning and her cheeks are flushed and _god_ she’s so beautiful it’s breathtaking really. He’s so fucking lucky. “Sorry, sorry,” he says, because she obviously doesn’t need to tell him anything for him to know what she’s thinking. “For my defense, this really _is_ very exciting.”

“I see that,” she retorts with an obvious side-glance to his crotch, and he feels himself blush.

“That’s not fair, it’s not as obvious for you,” he pretends to whine, expecting her to roll her eyes. She doesn’t. She bites her lip, then leans up a little to drop a trail of kisses along his jaw, making shivers run up and down his spine.

“Oh I’m definitely affected too, believe me,” she whispers in his ear, grinding against his hip, and he gasps, hoping she means what he thinks she means, and also kind of willing to maybe _check_.

That’s not taking things slow though. Why did they agree on that again? He can’t think of any good reasons anymore.

“ _Fuck_.”

She lets out a chuckle, teasing the lobe of his ear for a second – maybe he moans a little, he’s not sure – before moving away and dropping what very sadly feels like a final, way too short kiss on his lips. He stares up at her in wonder, and his next words come out of his mouth before he even thinks them. “How are we supposed to do anything now?”

She snorts, shaking her head, then nods to his chest. “For starters we should probably put our shirts back on.”

“Oh.” He can’t help it. Can’t help his little pout and the definite disappointment in his voice. Can’t help looking down at where her breasts are still very flatteringly pressed against his side. He thinks it’s only fair, because he didn’t get that good a look at them anyway, since they were too busy snogging each other before. Do boyfriends have breasts privilege of any kind? He really hopes so. He really knows squat about all this. He’s pretty sure she’s going to be delighted to teach him all that stuff. Boyfriend stuff, and also lover stuff. Are they lovers now? Oh wow what has his life become?

So. _fucking._ lucky.

He’s still staring adoringly at her breasts, definitely not willing to stop just now, and she chuckles after a minute, resting her head on his shoulder. “Silly Fitz,” she tuts, but she sounds a little breathless, and he wonders how affected she really is by his attention. Jemma Simmons is horny for him, and that’s honestly the single most exhilarating thing in the entire world right now. He did that. She wants him, she loves him, she’s willing to let him stare at her boobs, how fucking perfect is _that_?

“Hmm?” he vaguely says, pretending not to have noticed she talked, and she laughs again, nudging him lightly, and he thinks things could not be more perfect than they are right now.

“So, about that date?”

Ah, maybe he’s wrong after all. Maybe things are going to get better and better with each passing second he spends with her. Jemma Simmons loves him. She wants him, she wants to go on a date with him, she wants him to be her boyfriend, she wants all this and more. He’s almost entirely sure she wants to _have sex_ with him, despite the fact that he knows nothing about all this and is probably going to end up embarrassing himself when they get to _that_ part. He already almost did though, and she didn’t seem annoyed by it at all. Experimentally speaking, he knows he just probably needs a lot of practice to get better at it. Which definitely sounds like a very good thing. Hopefully she’s okay to practice with him. Trial and error and all that.

Oh wow, maybe that could be his new personal side project, now that he’s not trying to figure out if she likes him using his own wonky enactment of the scientific method. Sounds like a great project. He’s always been a fast learner, and he’s pretty sure she’s going to be an amazing teacher. If she wants to, that is. He’s pretty sure she does.

He’s going to _ask_ her, this time. He’s learned his lesson now. Communication is the key.

He thinks he just needs to find a better way to ask her than ‘hey, do you wanna teach me how to become super good at making you come?’

He’s got time for that. First, he’s going to take her out on a _date_. A real, proper one. In a fancy restaurant, with flowers, and both of them all dressed up and stuff. And there will probably be more kissing. Hopefully. He’s very on board with the kissing.

_Kissing Jemma Simmons._

This is all _very_ exciting.

Fin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There you have it ♥ I hope you enjoyed this last chapter, thank you so much to everyone for reading and leaving kudos and commenting, I had a lot of fun writing this fic and you all made it that much more special! ♥♥
> 
> Please tell me what you thought :D

**Author's Note:**

> I'm also on Tumblr if you'd like, @eowima :D


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